


Next to Normal

by fictorium



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Bipolar Disorder, Canon - Musical, Character Death, Dysfunctional Family, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Musical References, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you need to know? Let's see...</p>
<p>Regina and Emma have been together for well over a decade, married and living together in Storybrooke. They adopted two children: Henry and Snow. We join their lives one Fall evening, in what turns out to be the calm before a very specific storm.</p>
<p>Trigger warnings will be added on a chapter by chapter basis, but the big one up front is for mental health issues: depression, bipolar disorder, and the pharmaceutical treatment of them. </p>
<p>While this story is based on the musical <i>Next to Normal</i>, various adaptations have been made. That said, <b>IF YOU KNOW THE BIG REVEALS OF THE NEXT TO NORMAL PLOT, PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL THEM FOR OTHERS</b>. If you're familiar with the book and score you'll know roughly what to expect, but let's leave the new audience with some mystery, hmm? So no giving it all away in the comments or anything ;)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Just Another Day

**Author's Note:**

> Next to Normal is a Pulitzer-winning Broadway musical that I was lucky enough to see a number of times in 2009 and 2010. The subject matter it deals with is highly emotional: mental illness, grief, suicide, the practice of psychiatry, and the family unit. The main character, Diana, is someone who resonates with me as being very similar in terms of pain and outlook to Regina, and from that an adaptation to form this AU began. 
> 
> All characters have been left as close to their existing canon as possible: Emma is still a foster kid, Regina had a difficult relationship with her mother, Snow is precocious and frequently annoying. 
> 
> Finally, there is some fantastic meta discussion in the fandom when it comes to [Regina and mental illness](http://onceuponameta.tumblr.com/tagged/ouat-and-mental-illness). 
> 
> This story is not an attempt to pathologise her, but rather an application of the musical's theme of appropriate recognition and treatment when it comes to depressive disorders, particularly when it comes to the impact grief. While I appreciate the limits of the DSM when it comes to race, gender and sexual orientation, I feel there's a relevance here for Regina and the exploration of her character and relationships, so please bear with me? This is certainly not a love letter to the existing practice of psychiatric care.
> 
> Any 'diagnosis' is framed by my own personal experience and further research, and this should not be mistaken as diagnosing canon Regina with anything. 
> 
> Thanks to writetherest, chilly-flame and paradoxalpoised for editing eyes and brilliant minds :)

Regina waits, mentally counting the steps along the driveway. Timing it to near perfection, she turns on the lamp just as Henry passes by the open door of the study. 

“Hey,” he grumbles, stopping in the unexpected spotlight. “What are you doing, waiting up for me? You haven’t done that in a long time.”

“I’ve been sitting here for hours, counting up the different ways you could have been killed,” Regina replies, closing her well-worn copy of Jane Eyre and setting it aside. Her nightshirt is flimsy, but wearing Emma’s oversized fisherman’s sweater on top is cozy. Next time, she’ll remember her slippers.

“So what were the top contenders?” Henry asks, sitting on the footstool in front of her, his long legs bent awkwardly and his hair falling in his face. “Or are you just going to accuse me of snorting coke again?”

“If you must know, I had it narrowed down to bird flu, a train crash, or a gang fight.”

“In Storybrooke? Dream on, Mom.”

“We both know you don’t stay in Storybrooke all the time, Henry,” Regina scolds. “Now go, get in bed before your other mom gets up and realizes you’ve been out all night again.”

“Why does she get so mad at me?” Henry whines, getting up and heading back out towards the hallway.

“Probably because you’re a pain in the ass,” Regina reminds him, getting up and turning the lamp off. “Her words, not mine. Get some sleep, could you?”

“Night,” Henry says with a chuckle, jogging towards the stairs. 

Dawn is already fighting its way through the dark skies as Regina walks into the kitchen, fetching a glass of water to take back to bed with her. A moment later, she notices her daughter standing by the open fridge, a bottle of energy drink in one hand and a book in the other.

“Snow,” Regina whispers. “It’s four in the morning. Is everything okay?”

“Hmm?” Snow replied, not looking up from her book. “Oh, yeah. I got hungry. And there’s no point going back to sleep now. I mean, I have practice before school, and this math homework isn’t going to calculate itself. Not to mention that paper on the food imagery in fairytales, which is just... yeah. What are you doing up?”

“Thirsty,” Regina offers, waving her empty glass to demonstrate. She doesn’t feel inclined to share Henry’s breaking of curfew with his sister; the girl might be a sort-of genius and a prodigy with a bow, but she also has the unfortunate habit of tattling. There are times when, despite the love that Regina knows she has stored deep inside her, Snow irritates the everloving shit out of her. “You should get some rest, sweetheart. I’m going upstairs now, to have sex with your mother.” 

“Woah, woah, woah,” Snow groans, finally closing the refrigerator. “That’s definitely TMI, Mom. But I’ll go back to bed if you promise to stop talking.”

“Deal.”

“Goodnight.”

Regina fills her glass at the tap, smiling at having grossed Snow out so very easily, listening to the quiet of early morning settle over the house again. She takes the stairs in measured steps of her bare feet, like a gymnast measuring her paces. 

Slipping into the bedroom, she isn’t surprised to see Emma hasn’t moved. Still sleeping like a toddler who collapsed mid-run, limbs splayed in ways that really shouldn’t be comfortable, but she finds her way into these positions every night, often at the expense of Regina’s peace and comfort.

“Hey,” Emma murmurs against the pillow as Regina shrugs the heavy sweater off and lets it fall to the floor. “I heard voices.”

“Oh, you know,” Regina murmurs, pulling down one strap of her nightdress and then the other, gaining Emma’s full attention in a half-second. “Just me, talking to myself.”

“Are we, uh...”

“If you’ve got the energy, I thought we might.”

“Oh hell yes, I’ve got energy. You don’t drink as many coffees as I do in a day without keeping a little energy in the tank.” Emma’s oversized t-shirt that doubles as pajamas is up and over her head in an instant.

Regina kisses the last words off Emma’s lips, smiling against her smile as their tongues meet briefly. They’re past the years of sneaking into the bathroom first to regain a minty-fresh mouth, one of the countless obstacles Regina threw up in trying not to become overly intimate; the children changed all that, as they did with just about everything else. 

“What brought this on?” Emma mutters as Regina kisses her way along Emma’s jaw, lingering over that spot beneath her ear that makes her toes curl and her fingers grasp blindly at the sheets.

“Can’t I just want to make love to my wife?”

Emma’s nose wrinkles at the bareness of the statement, the overly sentimental term that she’s never quite managed to feel at ease with. Not that Regina minded the frantic whispers about _fucking_ or a hundred other ways Emma used to find to talk dirty in bed.

“I’m not complaining,” Emma says, her voice deepening as arousal takes hold, which Regina takes as a cue to straddle those narrow hips, smirking when they’re already tilting upwards in the usual impatience.

“Uh uh,” Regina clicks her tongue in a tut of warning. Without her nightdress she can feel the cool air on bare skin, Emma’s insistence on keeping the temperature low only heightening the sensation right now. Regina draws one hand slowly down over the curve of her breast, tapping out a silent tango over her abdomen, and just when Emma sucks in a breath of anticipation at Regina’s hand making it to Emma’s body, Regina opts to slide two fingers deliberately between her own thighs.

“Hey!” Emma protests, but she’s biting her lip and her breathing is already ragged at the sight of Regina touching herself in such a blatant display, right there on top of Emma.

“Patience,” Regina scolds, reluctantly pulling her fingers free and hovering her fingers over Emma’s mouth for the split-second it takes for her to start enthusiastically sucking on them. “But yes dear, you first,” Regina says then, Emma’s tongue warm and wet as it swirls around her fingers. 

When Emma releases her hand, Regina takes the opportunity to rake her fingernails lightly over Emma’s breasts, enjoying the hiss of pleasure that provokes. This body she knows as well as her own, knows when to tease and when to pick up the pace. And right now, Emma’s trembling with just a little desperation, so Regina won’t be cruel. 

“Oh!” Emma cries out softly as Regina’s mouth descends on her willing body; this, Regina muses as she moves, is what power feels like.

***

“I’m late,” Emma grumbles, pulling a silk blouse from Regina’s closet. The teal will bring out her eyes, as if Emma gives even a single damn about that, but it probably means she’s forgotten the dry cleaning again.

“That’ll teach you to take a whole fifteen minutes,” Regina mutters, welcoming the stab of bitterness. That much feels familiar. Emma rolling over to ‘catch her breath’ turned into soft snoring quicker than Regina could groan in frustration, and here they are with Emma rushing off to join the life of the town again, Regina left behind with her rain check and an apologetic kiss on the cheek when the alarm went off.

“What?”

“Nothing, dear,” Regina turns back towards the window, curling her leg under her and sitting down on the white chaise that takes up most of that corner of the bedroom. Her silk robe offers no warmth on mornings like these, and she’s wrapped in Emma’s gray terrycloth instead. “I was just saying that it’s going to be a beautiful day.”

Emma moves closer, and Regina drinks in the smell of aloe from her shower gel, mixed with the perfume Snow bought Emma for her birthday, a pleasant but weak scent that owed more to green tea than anything in Regina’s own collection of musks and spices. 

“It’s raining,” Emma argues, peering through the space where Regina has already parted the heavy cream curtains.

“I happen to like the rain,” Regina snaps, feeling peevish but too tired to conceal it. Everything seems to take more effort now, her ankles creak as she shifts position, as though they’re starting to protest at treading water. Just the breakfasts and lunches now, and she’ll have the quiet house to herself again, a few hours to breathe and clean without interruption.

“Still,” Emma can’t let the point drop, pulling her shoulder-length curls into a messy ponytail. “It is that drizzling rain. And it’s Monday. And it’s freezing for September… but sure,” she relents, kneeling on the chaise in front of Regina. “I guess your little morning surprise makes the day look a bit more beautiful.”

“Smooth talker.”

“I am sorry about--”

“It’s fine. I should go fix the lunches. See you downstairs.”

“After work, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Regina lies, already knowing they won’t find the time. She can’t tell Emma that her skin has gone back to feeling raw, that just like so many other days Regina no longer feels like being touched. Instead she keeps quiet and slips out of the bedroom.

***

Henry’s waiting when she enters the kitchen, the overhead light buzzing gently and flickering at the ends to suggest a new bulb will be required soon. Regina sighs, making a mental note for a trip to the hardware store that might take up her afternoon. The town is so quiet during school hours, but it makes the whispers easier to hear when she’s almost the only one walking the streets. 

The smell of cleaning products hangs in the air, sharp and antiseptic. Regina flexes the fingers on both hands, her skin still red and starting to crack from the harsh chemicals; in her desire to clean every surface she’d forgotten to pause and put on gloves. 

“You’ve surfaced.” She smirks at her son. “I thought I’d need a crowbar to get you out of bed after your curfew-breaking.”

“I have plans.” Henry shrugs, taking a gulp of orange juice straight from the carton. At Regina’s frown, he shakes it to show it’s almost empty, he’s simply finishing it off.

“Of course you do,” Regina says, pulling bread from the bread bin and placing the bag beside the chopping board. “Did you have cereal?”

“Yeah,” Henry confirms, rolling his eyes. “And don’t sound all smug, Mom. You have no idea what I get up to all day.”

“Au contraire, Henry.” She moves over to the fridge now, scanning the contents and adding to her shopping list. Perhaps groceries can wait until tomorrow, the late night is already creaking in her joints. She pulls lettuce and some tomatoes from the crisper, enough to supplement the deli meat that Emma must have brought in on Saturday without having to be asked. At least the family will never starve. “You have gym first two periods. Then calculus, then English. And practice after school.”

“Not bad,” he remarks. “But which practice?” He helps himself to an apple from the bowl, almost a conciliatory gesture considering how often Regina nags him about nutrition, before retreating into the laundry room beside the porch.

“Soccer,” she guesses. “Your kit should be on the--”

“Got it,” he calls back, but he doesn’t rush to come back through when he hears his  
sister’s hurried footsteps thundering down the stairs.

“Lunch, Mom?” Snow demands. “The bus will be here any minute.”

“I can drop you, if you miss it,” Emma offers, following behind their daughter. She’s clutching her car keys in one hand, red leather jacket draped over that arm. With her free hand, she shoves the Sheriff’s badge into place on her belt. The transformation is complete, and Emma’s face settles into the frown of a day given over to petty disputes and pointless crimes.

“I can make the bus.” Snow isn’t quite whining, but she does look tired. Regina thinks tonight they’ll have a family talk about bedtimes and being responsible with homework. Their daughter has been obsessed with getting early admission to Yale, and though Connecticut isn’t the farthest she might have chosen, Regina still feels the first pangs of rejection deep in her chest.

“Lunch will just be a moment,” Regina assures them, pulling slices of bread from the bag and slapping them down on the board. The lettuce is already torn and washed, so she drops some on each slice with no small amount of irritation at the impatient audience. “Patience is still a virtue, darling.”

“Don’t bug your mom, kid,” Emma warns, but she’s smiling broadly all of a sudden. “I have her running a little behind this morning.”

Snow groans. “You’re being gross again, aren’t you?”

“Nothing gross about it,” Emma corrects, patting Regina’s ass as she passes to fill her Thermos mug with coffee. “Hey, can you pick up some groceries today? I have that training session all afternoon, God knows when I’ll get out.”

“Mmmhmm,” Regina answers. “You go earn the bacon, I’ll bring it home and cook it.”

“I swear, I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time,” Emma teases. “Snow, did you get your recital date yet?”

“You mean you actually remembered I have one?”

“Tell me the date,” Regina says. “I’ll put it on the calendar when I’m done with this.”

“Mom, the calendar is still showing December of last year,” Snow says, taking an apple with much more care than Henry did, inspecting each one before making her selection.

“Well then,” Regina corrects, irked at another missed detail. “Merry Christmas.”

“Yeah, Merry Christmas,” Snow groans. “And Happy Hannukah while we’re at it.”

“Where’s your violin?” Emma asks.

“By the front door,” Snow fires back. “Jeez, Mom. I know it was expensive but do I have to have it strapped to my body at all times?”

They bicker back and forth as Regina tries to focus on the task at hand. Her fingers are trembling when she reaches for the knife, but she grips the handle firmly and slices the tomato without incident. As she lays the juicy red circles in place, she realizes she hasn’t made enough for her growing family. There’s plenty of meat to go around, and so she reaches for more bread, starting the routine all over again, keeping the ratios exactly the same each time.

It’s still not enough. But she’s running out of space on the island counter. Oh well, the stool will do. Four more slices, more lettuce, more tomato. There’s no meat left? Maybe some cheese, in a minute. She can’t bring more things from the fridge until she just makes sure there will be enough sandwiches for all of them. 

Only four slices fit on the one free stool on this side. No matter. The floor. After all, didn’t she just spend half the night scrubbing it to a bacteria-free shine while waiting for Henry to show up?

The room has gone quiet. There’s no tomato left. That’s okay. More lettuce. It’s good for them.

Then there’s a hand on her shoulder and Regina feels that tilting sensation in the pit of her stomach. Emma. Her work voice, the soothing tones she reserves for drunks and lunatics and crying mothers. 

“Mom?” Henry asks, sounding very young as his voice wobbles in concern.

Regina looks to the laundry room for his support, but he offers a tight smile and slips out of the back door. 

“I’m fine,” she answers anyway. “I’m making sandwiches. On the, uh, floor.”

Over Regina’s head--she doesn’t remember kneeling, but how else can you make a sandwich on the floor tiles?--Emma hands Snow a five-dollar bill. A look passes between them, and this time Snow slinks off without a dramatic sigh or any kind of comment on Regina’s state.

“Regina,” Emma says, squeezing her shoulder. “Why don’t you go get dressed, hmm? I think it’s time we paid Archie a visit.”

“I was just--”

“I know,” Emma soothes. “Just to check. We won’t be there long. And we’ll have lunch at Granny’s instead.”

“What about the sandwiches?”

“I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you.”

“What should I wear?” Regina asks, the thought of her sprawling closet suddenly paralyzing. “You’re wearing my shirt.”

“Anything you like,” Emma replies. “Something warm, okay? I’ll meet you by the car.”

***

“Regina!” Archie is as effusive as ever when he opens the door. No doubt Emma has called or sent a text to warn him of their arrival. Regina ducks his offered handshake, looking past him for the only part of these appointments she enjoys.

“Pongo!” She calls softly, and she barely has to click her tongue before the giant dog comes bounding across the room in a jumble of long legs and black dots. 

“Another flare up,” Emma is explaining in a low voice, and Regina rolls her eyes while she has her back turned to both of them. All these euphemisms and complicated words to explain that she was overtired and got a little messed up over the lunch bags. 

“You can wait in the car,” she announces over her shoulder as she ruffles Pongo’s soft ears. His nose is as cool and wet as the rain outside and Regina smiles at the feel of it against her wrist, his warm breath coming in happy pants. If Emma dislikes the coldness of the command, she’s smart enough not to comment on it in front of Archie. Usually Regina is dropped off and Emma lurks elsewhere; being in the office with Regina must feel like accepting part of the blame for her condition, and Regina can’t fault Emma for wanting no part of that.

“Well,” Archie says, closing the door behind Emma and indicating that Regina should take her usual spot on the couch. He’s dressed too formally as ever, right down to the lopsided bow-tie that he no doubt spent too long fussing over in front of the mirror. A dozen cruel remarks about making the effort for no one gather on Regina’s tongue, but her heart isn’t in it and she swallows the barb instead.

Pongo follows Regina to her seat with his tail wagging strong enough to let him take flight if only he were designed for it. The moment she’s comfortable, he rests his chin on her lap, looking up at her with those big, sad eyes.

“You’ve been missed, as you can tell,” Archie points out. 

“I don’t need to be here,” Regina snaps. “I’m only doing this to keep the peace.”

“It has been eight months,” Archie counters. “Checking in isn’t the worst idea. You know I was reluctant to end our regular sessions.”

“Closer to nine,” Regina corrects, because she may not be able to keep track of her sandwich ingredients but she’s relished every moment of freedom outside of this overly fussy drawing room that masquerades as a place of comfort. If she concentrates, she might even be able to time her time away from it down to the minute. “Maybe we should call Emma back in. She’s the one who’s so concerned.”

“You don’t feel able to talk about what happened this morning?”

“I made too many sandwiches,” Regina sighs. “I didn’t sleep well, so I’m tired. But since we both know I’m not walking out of here without a new prescription and a bunch of follow-up appointments, can we just skip the pleasantries?”

“We don’t have to rush--”

“What’ll it be this time? Ativan? Xanax? Or are we going to move right on to the Buspar? Dealer’s choice.”

“Regina, we have to discuss your symptoms first. I’ve been treating your bipolar disorder for sixteen years, and we both know it’s not that simple.”

“Fine. But I don’t have all morning. I have grocery shopping to do.”

***

“I’ll take a cocoa, Rubes.”

“On a Monday morning?” Ruby smartasses, but when she turns to fully look at Emma, Ruby reaches for the whipped cream can and cinnamon shaker without needing to be asked a second time. “Everything okay there, Sheriff?”

Emma’s used to her family life being a matter of town discussion by now, it’s hard to keep any secrets in a place this small. All the same, the reflex to deflect prying eyes is strong, until she forces herself to remember that Ruby is a friend, and there’s nothing much to worry about right now.

“Just one of those Mondays,” Emma answers, trying to keep it light. “It’d be a lot easier if you’d finally agree to come be my Deputy instead of just volunteering at events.”

“I’m not selling this place,” Ruby reminds her. “Every time Gold makes an offer I can feel her looking down on me, disapproving.”

“We’re not getting any younger,” Emma argues. “But you know where I am if you ever change your mind. Thanks,” she says, accepting the cocoa. “Regina wasn’t feeling too well this morning.” She drops the last bit of news casually, looking away just long enough to let Ruby marshal an appropriate reaction.

“You took her to Dr Whale?” Ruby asks a moment later, and despite the years of Emma saying she doesn’t need it, the question still drips with unsolicited sympathy.

“Nah, just Hopper.”

“Ah,” Ruby fills in the rest of the blanks herself. It’s the crazy kind of ill, but not bad enough for actual injuries. “You okay?”

“We all made it out in one piece, so yeah.” Emma won’t be bitter, she won’t, but somewhere in the past few months she can see now that she let her guard down, she started assuming that the ‘okay’ would last as long as she wanted it to. “Don’t say anything when we come in for lunch later, though?”

“Of course,” Ruby replies. “Let me get you a chocolate chip cookie. They’re fresh out of the oven.”

***

“You’re late, Regina.”

“Let’s overlook the fact that I showed up late to this fifty-minute party and embrace the fact that I showed up at all,” Regina suggests. “Don’t bug me, doctor.”

“Trouble at home this morning? I didn’t see Emma’s car outside.”

“We walked,” Regina explains. “No doubt she’ll be over in the diner, just like last week. Drinking something with too much cream and gossiping with the Lucas girl. But let’s pretend I think she’s sitting outside in the hall. It’s important to her that I believe in these little displays of devotion.”

“You’re still upset with her? For bringing you back to therapy?” Archie’s sweater has a garish pattern that bothers Regina, and perhaps today she won’t bite her tongue to spare his feelings. 

“No,” Regina corrects. “Although dragged would be a more appropriate verb.”

“You’ll hurt Pongo’s feelings.” Archie smiles at his beloved pet, head resting in Regina’s lap again.

“He’ll love me regardless.” Regina shrugs. “Loyalty is such a stupid quality, don’t you find?”

“I don’t,” Archie sits up straighter in his chair. “How are you feeling? Missed any days on the new meds so far?”

“I’ve taken my two a day, don’t worry. And I don’t really feel any different, except for sleeping a little easier. No more using Dan Brown novels as a sleep aid.”

“You like Dan Brown?”

“No, I hoped reading them would make my mind desperate enough to sleep as a form of self-defense. Valium is, fortunately, even more effective.”

“Ah. Anything else?”

Regina leans back against the couch, running through the regular questions in her mind. They’ll be done sooner if she skips to the answers he needs to check off. 

“I’m starting to bloat,” she says, pouting just a little. “My rings feel tighter.”

“That’s all?”

“No I’m nauseous, constipated and have no appetite whatsoever,” Regina announces as she bends to greet Pongo. “Although somehow I’ve managed to gain six pounds, so thank you for that.”

“Ah,” Archie starts to scribble on his pad. “We might need to tweak the dosage, in that case. We’ll get it right eventually.”

“Such an exact science,” Regina groans. “And no, no increased desire to hurl myself off a bridge, since I know you have to ask that, too.”

“Do you feel any better during the day?”

“I haven’t tried to garnish any floor tiles all week.”

“Well. That is good news.”

***

“Cocoa,” Ruby says, placing the mug in front of Emma. “And don’t you dare try paying for it this time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Emma replies with a mock-salute. “It’s quiet in here this morning.”

“You’re waiting for Regina?”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be weekly for a while. You’ll have to start charging me after all.”

Ruby takes a seat opposite Emma in the booth. 

“Snow was in after school on Friday. I think she has a boyfriend.”

“Well that should suck up all the free time she doesn’t have.”

“One of the Nolan boys,” Ruby continues. “Don’t ask me which one, though. You don’t think she’s acting out because of Regina, do you?”

“It’s nothing, honestly,” Emma insists. “Just letting Archie keep an eye on things. Christ, did you see all this coming when we met?”

“I don’t think anyone did,” Ruby confirms. “One of the kids the other day was going on about Kathryn, you know? Bitching her out over closing the park, because they all like to take their stolen beer down there to drink it.”

“Do they now?”

“Oh come on, Sheriff. I know when you’re turning a blind eye. Anyway, I said something about ‘you’re lucky it’s not Mayor Mills, or you’d all be in real trouble’. And they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.”

“She was a great Mayor,” Emma replies, instantly on the defensive. Ruby places a calming hand on top of Emma’s own. 

“I know. Youngest in the history of the state of Maine, all of that. We really would have missed you both around here if you’d taken that job in Boston, Emma. Maybe one good thing is that you two got to have a home here.”

“Yeah,” Emma concedes, pulling her hand away and sipping at her cocoa. “I never thought I’d have a real home. And here I am, more than twenty years later.”

“You look great for 50,” Ruby says, her voice solemn.

“You bitch, you know I’m only 41!”

“Oops,” Ruby teases. “What time are you picking Regina up?”

“I have a while yet,” Emma says. “Now why don’t you tell me about this young man you’ve been stepping out with? I could do with some salacious gossip.”

“You sound like Granny,” Ruby groans, and there’s just a tinge of sadness to it, making Emma feel guilty all over again. 

“Still. It might cheer us both up.”

***

“How’s week two treating you?” Archie asks, settling into his chair still in his hiking gear. Regina hoped moving her appointment would buy her a cancellation and a day off, but he had insisted he could fit her in for an early evening session. “And the new adjustment?”

“Technically, we’re in week three.”

“I meant the past week,” Archie amends. “You’re certainly looking very well.”

“Well, doctor, you flatter me. But we’d better not. My wife is waiting in the car again.”

“Regina, I wasn’t--”

“I know. And I was kidding, obviously.” It’s so easy to make him blush that Regina rarely tries. Tonight, she can almost muster a smile at the simple victory. “At the moment I have absolutely no desire for sex.”

“Speaking of Emma, how are things at home?”

“As well as can be expected,” Regina explains. “I manage my illness; Emma manages her disappointment. We fit that in around school and her work and family dinner. It’s… fine.”

“She’s disappointed that you relapsed?”

“She doesn’t say so,” Regina amends, scowling at the unasked question. “But of course she is. How could she not be? When we met I was young, vibrant, even powerful. If not for… all of this…” Regina waves her hand in that vague way she’s perfected over the years. “I might even be in Congress by now. We’d certainly be settled in Boston, or perhaps Washington. But she turned down that job with the BPD and that was that, I suppose.”

“Did you ask her to? Turn it down, I mean.” Archie’s silver pen hovers over the legal pad that he seems to think lends him an air of legitimacy. Regina had agreed to be treated by him out of convenience, despite knowing about his less than excellent degree from a college that might as well have issued its diplomas from a cereal box. Today that seems a particularly frustrating compromise as he fumbles through the obvious questions.

“No. She made that decision on her own,” Regina clarifies. “Because of Henry, really. It was back when he got sick.”

“Of course.”

“Actually, I think I’m done for tonight,” Regina says because she can taste the metal under her tongue. “I don’t want to talk about the life I might have had.”

“Are you okay? You’ve gone quite pale,” Archie leans forward in concern, almost treading on Pongo’s paw. Tonight’s position of worship has the dog sprawled over Regina’s feet, but she gently nudges him aside. She knows what’s brewing inside her, another pointless panic attack, and she refuses to have it with an audience. 

“Fine,” Regina lies. “You’ve just reminded me there’s something I need to talk to Emma about. I’ll come again before the end of the week.”

“I think we should--”

“I promise,” Regina adds, slightly desperate now. 

“Very well,” Archie relents. “Try to make it by Thursday, then.”

Regina nods in agreement and makes quick strides towards the door. She locks herself in the bathroom before Archie can follow her out of the office, and starts trying to breathe through the crushing tightness in her chest.

***

“Honey, I’m home,” Emma announces from the door of the study.

“The honey’s in the pantry,” Regina sasses back, peering over the top of her reading glasses. “So you’ll have to shout a little louder for it to hear you.”

“One of these days I’ll get to use a pet name, and you’ll let me get away with it,” Emma grouses. “You look busy.”

“I’m proofing Snow’s college applications. And sorting through her supporting information. I can’t leave it to those idiots at the school.”

“You offered?”

“She wasn’t going to ask.”

Emma comes fully into the room, closing the door behind her. She weaves her way through the furniture to lean on the corner of the desk, looking at the laptop screen with little interest. 

“That lunch you packed today was delicious, for the record.”

“It was just chicken parm,” Regina says, tapping away at the keyboard to delete a redundant phrase. “But I’m glad you liked it.”

“You’re doing better, I can tell.”

“You’re only saying that because you got to eat with a knife and fork instead of a mop and bucket this time.”

“Seriously,” Emma leans over to kiss Regina sweetly on the lips. It feels welcome, and familiar in the way that makes Regina’s heart clench with happiness for a moment. 

“It’s just the initial lift,” Regina reminds her. “Every new pill does this for the first few weeks.”

“It’s been five. It looks--”

“I’m saying, don’t expect a miracle. I do feel like I’m on top of things again though, that much I can admit.”

“How about you get on top of me, then?” Emma suggests, wiggling her eyebrows in mock-seduction. “Only we have the house to ourselves for a change.”

“Well,” Regina considers, the twinge between her thighs making the decision very quickly. She closes the laptop and pushes the papers aside. “If you promise to be normal with me. No treating me like a piece of fine china, Emma.”

Emma grabs Regina’s wrist and pulls her to her feet. The kiss, when it lands, is just short of bruising, and it leaves them both breathless.

“Too delicate?” Emma asks, bending over for a moment and hoisting Regina over her shoulder in an improvised fireman’s carry. 

“Put me down!” Regina squeals, the laugh bubbling up and out of her throat before she can think about it. “If you throw your back out, Emma…”

“You weigh next to nothing, I think I can handle it,” Emma throws back, although there’s the hint of a groan as she looks at the height of the staircase, which only makes Regina laugh harder.

“Come on, Romeo,” Regina teases as they move up step by step. “Put me down, and you can have me right here on the stairs.”

Emma doesn’t need to be told twice.

***

“I have a transfer in the morning,” Emma says, checking her phone as she slumps back against the pillows. “August was supposed to take point, but his leg is playing up again.”

“That’s a pain for you. All the way to Portland?”

“Yeah. But it means I’m not here to take you to Archie’s. I can call and move the appointment if you want, so he knows it’s my fault.”

“No need,” Regina assures her, squeezing Emma’s thigh where her hand is already resting. “It’s a ten-minute walk. I’ll even look both ways before crossing the street.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” Regina assures her, with a kiss. “It’s really not a problem.”

***

“How are you feeling? The cocktail should be starting to settle now, we’re hitting five weeks.”

“I have a headache. Actually, I’ve had one all week, save for a few hours last night.”

“I won’t ask what the cure was,” Archie says with a knowing little smirk. “Anything else?”

“My vision gets blurry, mostly in the evenings,” Regina admits. “I’ve taken to wearing my glasses again. Oh, and my toes get numb. I don’t always notice until I get up to walk around, but it happens.”

“Circulation can be affected,” Archie confirms. “So there’s one more pill I want you to add to the regimen.”

***

“Mom?”

Regina only meant to listen for a moment, not to be discovered. Lost in the fast bowing of the _allegretto_ , she finds her own fingers twitching to play the piano line of the sonata, but Snow is just as proficient without accompaniment, her fingers nimble and her rhythm assured. 

“Sorry,” Regina offers. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed, but this is--”

“One of your favorites, I know. You’re such a dork about Ravel.”

“You’re playing beautifully. Ms Smart must be pleased with your technique.”

Snow puts the instrument carelessly on top of her schoolbag, dropping the bow beside it.

“You don’t have to pretend to care, you know. I know you have a lot on your plate.”

“Speaking of plates, what are you in the mood for, dinner wise?”

“I have plans,” Snow brushes the offer aside without a thought. “I’ll eat at the diner with my friends.”

“Right. How’s the second movement coming along? You never did like anything blues. Too much improvisation for you, right?”

“Something like that. Are you sticking around, or…?”

“I’ll be downstairs,” Regina sighs. “Have a good practice.”

***

“I can’t believe I’ve been coming here for almost two months,” Regina says, fiddling with the rings on her wedding finger.

“But how do you feel? It’s just been seven weeks,” Archie corrects, falling into their usual game.

“I don’t feel like myself, really,” Regina struggles to put it into words. There’s a numbness that’s crept into her daily life, a softness at the edges that makes her able to shop and cook and check over homework. She’s even back to semi-regular sex with Emma, and that’s clearly doing them both good, not least because they’re both tired enough to sleep through the night. “In fact, I don’t feel much of anything.”

“No extreme emotional episodes?” Archie looks satisfied as he studies her. “Sounds to me like you’re stable, Regina. That’s excellent news.”

“Is it?”

“Absolutely,” Archie confirms. “That’s what we’ve been aiming for this whole time.”

***

Regina surveys the messy racks that take up half of the garage, surrounding her Benz where it waits under a tarp. Emma parks her beloved Bug in the driveway come hail, rain or shine, and the rare times she brings the cruiser home it waits in the street as a reminder of who exactly lives in what used to be just Regina’s house, once upon a time.

Voices by the garage door startle her at first, but she slinks behind a shelving unit overflowing with gardening equipment to stay out of sight at the sound of Snow chattering to someone Regina doesn’t recognize. 

“I’m pretty sure we don’t have anything you could use,” Snow is explaining. “I mean, I don’t have anything like that, and even though my Moms got pretty wild back in the day, there’s no way they kept a bong lying around for me to find.”

“I’d like to meet them,” the boy says. “I mean, I’m not one of those guys who gets scared of bullshit stuff like that. I’m not scared of commitment.”

“Calm down, David,” Snow warns. “We made out a few times, I’m not looking for a baby daddy.”

“Is that an apple tree? Cool, I can make a bong out of an apple,” David declares, and whatever reaction Snow has makes him laugh. “What?”

“Does your father know you smoke so much?”

“He doesn’t give a damn, so long as I stay on the football team and don’t give him too much school crap to sign,” David answers. “He has a farm to run, and my brother to worship.”

Whatever they say next carries out of Regina’s earshot, and for a moment she considers following until she sees Henry watching from the door that leads into the laundry room. 

“When did she get a boyfriend?” Regina asks.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Henry answers as only a big brother can. “I can keep an eye on him, if you want. Freak him out a bit.”

“No,” Regina says, and if it’s wistful she can’t help it. “Clearly she doesn’t want the family involved right now. I remember how that goes.”

“So you’re just going to spy on them?” 

“I just… how did I miss that? I’m here most of the time.”

“You kind of miss a lot, Mom,” Henry reminds her. “But you know, they’re young, they’re healthy, they’re ho--”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Regina tells him. “I wonder if they’re in love?”

“It happens,” Henry says with a shrug. “Oh God, is this going to be one of those times you get all misty-eyed about how you and Mom met?”

“No,” Regina snaps. “Although it would be nice if you actually listened to these stories sometimes. It’s your history, too.”

“History is for dorks, Mom. Who cares about the past? I’m going to get a soda, you want one?”

Regina shakes her head.

***

_”Marry me,” Emma blurted, frosting from the cupcakes still on her top lip. “I mean it, Regina. Let’s be a family, for real.”_

_“What do you know about family, Emma Swan?”_

_“Nuh uh, not gonna work. No bitchy Mayor crap to push me away.”_

_“You sure about that?” Regina demanded, looking down at the crib they’d just assembled in the guest bedroom. “Mother won’t like it. Just like she doesn’t like me taking in a child I found on the doorstep.”_

_“You run the whole town, Regina. Who cares what she thinks?”_

_“This is her house, technically.”_

_“So marry me, and we’ll buy that shack in the woods. Or that place that used to be the mill. I don’t care, as long as we don’t have to sneak back to separate houses every few days to pretend we’re not totally living together.”_

_“And even with this baby?”_

_“Henry found us, Regina. It’s a goddamned sign, I swear to God.”_

_“You can’t talk like that and be a Sheriff’s Deputy,” Regina pointed out. “You have to be polite to the people you serve.”_

_“So teach me to talk all fancy. It’s been a year already, and you’re still rubbing off on me.”_

_“You’re even younger than I am, Emma. You sure you want to throw your life away on bitchy me? And adopt a baby with me? What if this is a ‘goddamned’ sign for you to pack up and get the hell out town like you’ve been threatening since you showed up three years ago?”_

_“Nope, not that kind of sign,” Emma declared, before kissing Regina firmly on the mouth. “Marry me, you pain in the ass.”_

_“Don’t say I didn’t warn you…”_

_“You’re evil,” Emma groaned. “But I’m totally taking that as a ‘yes’.”_

***

“You were supposed to take that with breakfast.” The accusation echoes against the tile, and he steps into view behind her, letting Regina see him in the mirror. Sure enough, he has a soda in his hand.

“I felt nauseous first thing, so I didn’t have breakfast,” Regina explains, shaking the little orange bottle, mocking Henry just a little. “A couple of hours won’t make much difference. What are you doing home, anyway? Your sister has a free period, but you don’t.”

“Stop being creepy about my timetable,” Henry demands. “How are these pills working out, anyway?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure a house could fall on my head and I’d barely feel it,” Regina admits. There’s something in Henry that makes it easier to tell him the truth. “And I think they’re possibly why I keep missing things. All that numbness, you know?”

Henry steps up and hugs her from behind, bending his knees so as not to tower over her. His chin digs into her collarbone, but she’s grateful for it. 

“You have a bony chin,” Regina accuses, laying a palm on his cheek. A moment later he pulls away, his son’s duty completed once more. She misses the lean strength of him instantly, the muscles of his upper arms no longer pressing her sides and anchoring her.

“If they make you so numb, maybe you shouldn’t be taking them,” Henry suggests, picking up the bottle and peering at the label through the shaggy hair that falls in front of his eyes. “Swan-Mills, Mrs R. DOB--”

“I’m anticipating your age jokes, Henry, and I’m finding none of them hilarious.”

“So take your pills,” he says, handing over the bottle. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“I have to,” she says quietly.

“There’s no ‘have to’,” Henry reminds her. “What happens when the things you miss start including me, huh? How do you think that’s going to feel? For me, I mean.”

“Emma would be upset if I stopped again now.”

“Mom’s always upset about something. She won’t even look at me, remember?”

“I mean, it was just one little slip. Anyone could flip out on a Monday morning, right? It was just a bad day. And here I am again, drugged to the eyeballs. I miss… feeling things.”

“A bad day could happen to anyone,” Henry agrees after a moment. “And I do love you, Mom, but you’re way less fun like this.”

“Was I ever fun before?”

“Maybe not intentionally? But sure. I’ve always thought so.”

“And they are just pills. It’s not ever going to be some magic cure,” Regina rationalizes, the taste of rebellion in the air. 

“Exactly.”

“And you won’t tell Emma?”

“She wouldn’t listen to me if I did,” Henry points out, not unreasonably.

Regina pops the lid on the little orange bottle, and considers. Take the dose, keep the routine, smile and everyone enjoys the calm a while longer. Sure, it never lasts, but wouldn’t it make the most sense to just behave again?

She breathes in deeply. Breathes out.

Breathes in again.

And tilts the bottle over the toilet, letting every last one splash into the water.

She pulls Henry close then, drinking in the scent of grass and sweat that lingers despite the soap and deodorant in evidence. 

“You ran home, didn’t you?” She asks.

“No point playing hooky if I’m going to hang around and get caught, is there?”

“We could play hooky together,” Regina suggests. “Go somewhere this afternoon.”

“Only if you’re willing to drive to Waterville for milkshakes.”

“I’m not supposed to--”

“Shakes, or no deal.” Henry stands firm on that point, wriggling out of her hug again. 

“Fine, you have a deal,” Regina concedes. “Now scoot, I have a whole bunch to get rid of, and some things should be done in private. Like this is supposed to be our private bathroom, mine and your mom’s.”

“Don’t take too long,” Henry insists. “And make sure you hide the empty bottles.”

***

“Wow,” Emma says, stumbling into the living room still in her pajamas. “You actually painted the whole room in a morning?”

“I did,” Regina says, placing the roller back in the tray. “I really love the brilliant white, don’t you? I thought some stencil work in the corner…”

“Whatever you say,” Emma agrees, pulling Regina into a one-armed hug. “You’re really on a roll these past couple of weeks. The house has never looked better.”

“Archie says it’s important to have goals. And projects to occupy my time,” Regina reminds her wife. “Let me clean up and I’ll make pancakes.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Ah, but I want to,” Regina insists. “I’m thinking pumpkin and ricotta?”

“God, you’re amazing. Then you’ll take it easy for the rest of the day, right?”

“Well, there’s a hike this afternoon that Kathryn is organizing…”

“Do I have to go?” Emma groans. “I spent all of last night wrestling a drunk Leroy into a  
cell.”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Regina offers. “But you don’t mind? I think I need the fresh air after the paint fumes.”

“Knock yourself out.”

***

“Snow!” Emma calls out across the driveway. “You and your friend here can help with the groceries. And don’t you have orchestra on Wednesdays?”

“No,” Snow answers, reluctantly taking a paper bag brimming with vegetables until the boy takes it from her and another straight from Emma’s arms.

“Hi, Sheriff Swan,” he says, blushing to the very tips of his ears. 

“You’re the Nolan boy,” Emma realizes. “How are the sheep doing? Your daddy better be keeping his fences in order, I don’t want to write up any more accidents.”

“He is,” he mutters. “My dad wanted to thank you for bringing that to his attention, but he hasn’t had a chance yet. I’m David, by the way. The eldest.”

“The eldest twin?” Emma smiles at him bothering to make the distinction. “So you’re the football player, not the doctor-in-training?”

“That’s right,” David confirms as Emma leads them towards the kitchen.

“And Albert Nolan doesn’t want to thank for me for shit, son, but nice try. At least one of you in that family has some damn manners. You staying for dinner?”

“No!” Snow interrupts. “We were just leaving when you waylaid us.”

“Sorry, missy, but your Mom called me three times to remind me it’s family dinner tonight.”

“David has homework.”

“You can do it here, after dinner,” Emma suggests. “If you can sit through Snow’s practicing, anyway. All that classical music is wasted on me.”

“I like it,” he says, lying his ass off.

“Actually, David has surgery in the morning,” Snow tries again. “So he should probably get going. He has to fast.”

“It’s only 12 hours fasting,” Emma corrects, enjoying getting under Snow’s skin so easily. “And a man deserves a last meal. Just stick the bags on the counter, you two. Let’s not risk Mom’s wrath by attempting to put things away.”

“We have a guest for dinner?” Regina enters as though summoned by the mention of her title. A crisp blue apron without a single stain covers her deep red blouse and black tailored pants, diamonds glinting at her ears. Instead of the French twist she’s favored lately, her hair is down and blown out in careful layers, the whole look set off by the killer patent black heels that click as she moves around the kitchen, queen of all she surveys. In that instant, Emma wishes their daughter and her guest very far away indeed, because the kitchen counters have never looked more inviting. “Good, I made plenty.” 

“I’m David,” he introduces himself, but Regina already seems to know who he is. Not surprising, she might not be as involved in the town these days, but she’s known it her whole life, unlike Emma. David wipes his right hand hastily on his jeans and extends it for Regina to shake. She does, with a bemused smile, before looking past him at Emma and winking.

“And just who are you to our Snow?” Regina asks, the very model of feigned innocence.

“He’s my friend.” Snow jumps in before they can mortify her. “What’s for dinner anyway? Maybe it’s something David is allergic to?”

“I don’t have any allergies,” he mumbles, staring at the floor.

“I made your favorite,” Regina replies, rooting through the bags now and producing the crusty bread Emma picked up from the bakery. “Slice this up, darling,” she says, handing it to Emma. “And feel free to use that sword in my study. It’s not just ceremonial, and David here might need a visual for what happens to any boy who messes with our little girl.”

Emma snorts at that, and David looks panicked for a long minute until Snow whispers something in his ear. The old Regina is very much in attendance tonight, and the fact that Snow smiles instead of rolling her eyes only confirms it. 

“You need any help?” Emma asks, deciding to hell with the kids and grabbing her wife en route to the fridge for a satisfying kiss.

“No, to the dining room with all of you. We’re having a little treat before dinner. Snow, dear, set another place for David when you get in there, please.”

“Fine,” Snow says, stomping off down the hall with David. Emma steals another kiss before marching right after them, mostly to spoil any fun they think they might have, alone for a few minutes in the dining room.

“Mom already set a spare place,” Snow says as Emma enters. “But I’m totally taking credit for it.”

***

Regina listens to the voices from the open dining room door as she lights the match. It takes a deft wrist to light all the candles in one, but she doesn’t quite make it as she lights a second and finishes the job. She can’t hear the conversation clearly, but she hopes Emma is teasing both Snow and Henry relentlessly, they don’t have company often enough to really indulge in that. David seems nice enough, despite his little weed habit. But Snow had been right about her mothers’ wild days, at least, and Regina isn’t prepared to be a hypocrite on that score.

She takes careful steps down the hall, out of practice in the heels. Regina relishes the moment to pause in the doorway, all backs turned to her but Henry’s and she watches her family at ease around each other.

“Happy birthday to you…” she starts to sing, and Henry’s smile is suddenly as bright as the candles. David turns first, his own smile a genuine one until Snow grabs his arm. No, darling, don’t spoil it, Regina thinks. They’re going to celebrate Henry’s birthday, just like they did for Snow a few months before.

It’s when Emma turns that Regina’s voice falters. Her wife’s face doesn’t reflect her own pride and joy, instead she looks to be on the verge of tears.

“Henry,” Regina says, interrupting her own song. “Tell your mother and your sister to lighten up, could you? They’re spoiling the whole effect.”

“Uh, I’m David?” David replies, even though Regina isn’t looking anywhere near him. She’s looking at her beautiful son, the tallest in the room, wearing a Ramones t-shirt that is definitely stolen from somewhere, because she sure as hell didn’t buy it.

“I’m not talking to you, dear,” Regina sighs. 

“Whose birthday is it?” David asks.

“It’s my brother’s,” Snow whispers, her voice only that quiet when rage has her in its grip.

“I didn’t know you had a brother,” David replies, and when Regina looks at him now he seems completely bewildered. Really, it’s not that complicated. Maybe she’ll have to reconsider letting Snow date such an idiot.

“Regina,” Emma interrupts now, taking the cake from Regina and placing it on the table. Regina cries out when Emma leans over and blows out the candles in one loud, careless breath. “He’s not here.”

“Yes I am,” Henry argues, gripping the back of one of the chairs. 

“See?” Regina pleads. 

“You have a brother?” David asks again.

“No,” Snow replies. “I don’t. He died before I was born.”

“What?” Regina hears the buzzing again. The taste is in her mouth but no, no, she is not letting this go. It’s Henry’s birthday and they will celebrate like a family.

“Listen to me,” Emma is begging now, taking Regina’s hands in her own. “Henry isn’t here. Can you see him right now?”

“Of course. He’s right there.”


	2. I Dreamed A Dance

“Oh God,” Emma groans, and she can’t hide the dismay. “I knew the mania was back, but there was no clue you were seeing things. You didn’t tell me you’d been seeing Henry. Regina, he’s been dead eighteen years. Regina, listen to me?”

“Fuck this,” Snow announces, tears running down her face. She’s rough when she pushes past to get out of the room, and Regina feels the air leak from her in a steady burst; she doesn’t remember how to breathe in again, until her body does it for her.

“No,” Regina shakes her head. She looks up, and Henry is gone. “No, don’t take him from me again.”

“I thought you were taking your meds,” Emma says, crying hard now, making her words less distinct. 

“I was, for a while.”

“And now?”

“Let’s just say the septic tank won’t be experiencing anxiety any time soon.”

“Shit, Regina. You were getting better. They were working.”

“No, they weren’t. Not really.”

“Then we’ll go back to Archie. Get something to treat the hallucinations,” Emma is grabbing on to the plan like it’s the last functioning rope on a parachute. “Delusions, I mean.”

“I’m not a delusion,” Henry says, back again and sitting at the head of the table. But Emma ignores him, as usual.

“We will fix this, Regina. I know it’s hard,” Emma says. 

“Do you?” Regina rounds on her, the shame and the anger bursting in her chest like flames. “What the _hell_ do you know about it, Emma? Little Miss Perfect, everyone’s Savior? You don’t know the first thing about how this feels.”

“You don’t think all of this happened to me, too?” Emma snarls. “You don’t think I’m still hurting?”

“Not so it shows.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. There’s only one way to express your feelings. If you’re not screaming from the roof, you’re just not suffering enough.”

“Nice.”

“Shit, Regina. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean--”

“Yes, you did,” Regina sighs. “You’d think by now we could at least be honest about that. You’re frustrated with all this. Angry that I never seem to get better and stay better. You don’t think I want that?”

“Sometimes it seems like you’d rather be angry than get over it,” Emma admits, hands on her hips. “That all you want is to keep lashing out, keep dragging everyone else down with you.”

“You think I’ve been enjoying it?” Regina feels her hands grasping, she needs to grab on to something or she’s going to fall over. The blood is pounding in her head and her throat is already raw from shouting while it’s so tight. “Waking up most mornings and wishing I’d died along with him? Knowing that if I stop, even for a minute, and really think about it and how much I miss him, that I might never get up again?”

“It’s been eighteen years!”

“I don’t care how long it’s been. I don’t care. And clearly you’ve given up on missing him. You’re ‘over it’.”

“Like I haven’t gone through every day of this with you?” Emma grips the back of a chair, on the opposite side of the table now. They both hear footsteps above them, Snow and David no doubt retreating to her bedroom. At least she hasn’t run off this time. “You honestly don’t think anyone hurts but you?”

Regina grabs at the tablecloth, and with the frustration of the day coming to a head, she yanks it towards herself, plates and cutlery scattering loudly in all directions. 

“Regina!” Emma yells, moving towards her, hands outstretched to hold her, to hold her down no doubt. Regina flinches away, moving towards the corner where Henry waits, leaning against the wall and balling his hands into fists over and over again, like this is just another family drama. “You’re scared of me, now?”

“No,” Regina denies it, shaking her head but that only makes fresh tears fall. She braces herself with one palm flat against the wall, keeping her back turned towards Emma. 

“No, please. Tell me exactly what the hell you’re scared of? Because you’re acting like I did this to you, like I’m trying to hurt you. Will you even let me touch you right now?”

Regina tries not to, but the pressure of Emma’s fingers on her shoulder makes her shudder.

“Great. Just great. I thought… I thought we were fine, Regina. And usually I see it coming, you know? I thought the sandwiches were just a sign you needed to get back on some meds. But it’s all of it, isn’t it? The decorating, the cleaning, the whole nine yards…”

“I felt better when I came off them,” Regina admits. “I talked about it with… well, I felt better.”

“You talked about it with Henry, you mean? Regina, you can’t take medical advice from a delusion.”

“Don’t you call him that! Don’t you dare do it!” Regina rounds on her wife then, the urge to attack crackling under her skin. “He’s been my one comfort.”

“And I haven’t? I’ve been here for you. Every crash, the fire, the freakouts in the grocery store, all of it. Holding your hand when the lithium made you throw up. Taking Snow to school when you couldn’t get off the floor of the shower. I did it, Regina. And I’m not asking for praise. But fuck, I could at least get some credit for trying.”

“I’m not appreciative enough?”

“No,” Emma sighs. “No, I don’t mean it like that. It’s just… I stayed because I love you, Regina. I’ve always loved you, and I would give anything for you not to have suffered like that. You know that much, surely?”

“You just want me to be normal. You want me to pretend that it didn’t happen.”

“I never asked that,” Emma insists. “I just wanted you to try, like I’ve been trying. And I’m sorry for all the times I’ve failed you, I really am. But I’m just doing my best. I don’t know what else I can do. I’m not some kind of hero. I don’t know how to save you from all of this.”

“You don’t need to be saved,” Henry snarls, moving closer to Regina now, and she lets him wrap his arms around her, because even if it isn’t real it feels so much better than anything that is. “Why can’t you just accept that I’m still here, Emma?”

Emma’s crying into her sleeve now, but of course she doesn’t respond; she never does. 

“Is it being with me that makes you this unhappy?” Emma asks after a while, pulling a chair out from the table and sinking onto it. “Do you want to leave me?”

Regina shakes her head, not trusting herself to speak. Loving Emma is easy, most of the time. Loving Emma is safe and real and tangible, a constance that doesn’t exist anywhere else. 

“It’s just sometimes…” Regina can’t quite summon the words. “It feels like you don’t give a damn, so long as I seem okay. You know, on the surface.”

“Tell her, Mom,” Henry chimes in.

“You’re telling me I don’t give a damn?” Emma laughs at that, but it’s hollow and rattles in her throat like broken glass. “It’s like you don’t know who I am anymore. At all.”

“I just don’t see it in you,” Regina confesses.

“I can’t always tell, Regina. I’m not a fucking mind-reader! There are no cuts. You don’t look bruised, there’s no broken bone to put a cast on. I feel the same way and I know it doesn’t show. Does that even matter to you?”

“Yes. Of course it does.”

“Then tell me what you need me to do,” Emma is crying harder now, her words harder to make out. “Tell me what kind of person you need me to be. Because I have tried and tried to be a good person, and it doesn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference.”

“Maybe if you acknowledged me once in a while,” Henry tries, but Regina shushes him. 

“You’re doing everything right,” Regina tells her. “I don’t know if there’s anything else that anyone can do. Maybe this is just as good as it gets. Or maybe we don’t know each other as well as we thought. I’m tired. So tired.”

“Go take a nap,” Emma says, pulling herself together with visible struggle. “I’ll bring you up a plate, if you want.”

“I’m not hungry,” Regina answers, and for a moment she feels the impulse to go to Emma, to pull her close and beg her not to give up on them, not now. Instead she leans into the comfort of Henry, before backing out of the dining room and heading for the stairs.

Grunge music is blasting from Snow’s closed bedroom door as Regina passes. How she misses the day of rebellion through Shostakovich. It would be wiser, perhaps, to keep walking, but the sound of raised voices over the music is enough to make her pause. Another explanation, another laying bare of the Swan-Mills family traumas. There’s a possessive part of Regina that wants the story never to be told again, for no new person to hear and fail to understand. Each telling diminishes it somehow, makes Henry a little less hers. 

“Leave it,” Henry warns as she puts her hand on the doorknob. “You know she’s gonna take your head off.”

“Maybe it’s time for my beheading,” Regina tells him. “You stay out of it. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”

“Get out!” Snow yells as soon as the door moves. “Ma, I don’t want--oh, it’s you.”

“Turn that down!” Regina yells back, and when Snow makes no move, Regina takes it on herself to step over David where he sits on the floor and yank the stereo’s plug from the socket. The sudden silence is overwhelming.

“If you’re here to apologize, don’t bother,” Snow grumbles, sitting on the edge of her bed without disturbing the neat piles of books and homework all over it. “Damage is done. Yet again.”

“You and David should go eat,” Regina says. “The food will go to waste otherwise.”

“No thanks. Not while you still expect me to set a place for him.”

“For who?”

“For Superboy, who else?”

“Don’t talk about him that way, Snow. I’m warning you.” Regina watches David pick himself up off the floor, clearly beside himself with embarrassment. 

“Right. I’ll just go back to being invisible,” Snow snaps, taking David’s hand when he offers it. If she weren’t so angry, Regina realizes, she would never allow that simple act of affection to be witnessed. There’s something so very wrong with that. “And I already told you to get out.”

“You know I love you, darling,” Regina tries. Her voice sounds high and strange. “You’re our pride and joy, so much more than we ever planned or hoped for.”

“Right,” Snow snorts.

“I do love you,” Regina insists. “I love you as much as I can.”

“That,” Snow replies. “Is the problem. It’s not supposed to come with limits, Mom. Now go spend some time with your prince, since you’d much rather he showed up than spend another minute with me. It’s not like you’re really here, either.”

“Snow,” David tries to interrupt, but she waves him off. 

“My Mom needs to go and lie down,” Snow says, her voice a monotone now. 

Regina holds up her hands in defeat, making her way back towards the door. A little sleep will make the difference, hopefully. That, at least, she still has a pill for.

***

“Why are we leaving so early?” Regina grouses, wrapping a cream-colored scarf around her neck and buttoning her gray trenchcoat. She doesn’t remember buying it, but it’s hanging there in the hall closet anyway.

“Because we’re not going to Archie,” Emma explains, and Regina remembers now, which makes it at least the third or fourth time Emma’s explained. “This guy comes highly recommended. The support group on Facebook said finding a therapist is a lot like dating sometimes: you gotta shop around. And Gold is apparently some kind of rockstar.”

“Archie’s been treating me for years.”

“And maybe that’s the problem. Come on, I’ve left time to get some of that chai latte you like so much on the way.”

“Thank you,” Regina says, and maybe it’s just about time, after a week of fragile repairing, but she pulls Emma into a slightly desperate hug. “Other people would have bailed a long time ago, with me being this nuts.”

“I stopped running away the day I married you,” Emma reminds her, but she’s hugging back like maybe, just maybe she’s missed this too. “And you’re not that crazy, Regina. We just need to find the right solution.”

“You’re infuriatingly optimistic, you know that?”

“Only when it comes to you. And Snow.”

“Let’s go get that chai, since it’s rightfully mine.”

“You’re on,” Emma says, opening the front door and leading the way to her car.

***

“Fill out these forms,” the receptionist is cheery, with startling blue eyes and bright auburn hair that’s offset perfectly by her pale green blouse. “And if you take a seat, we’ll call you when Dr. Gold is ready.”

“Thanks,” Emma says, apparently unable to keep herself from smiling back. Regina feels a pang of jealousy in the pit of her stomach, snatching the clipboard away and stalking across the waiting room. It would be more effective if she’d also thought to grab the pen, and so she waits for a bemused Emma to join her after all.

“I can write my own name,” Regina says by way of explanation, taking the pen that Emma’s still holding. “And everything else, for that matter.”

“Fine,” Emma sighs. “I suppose you remember the dates and dosages and everything, too?”

“I’ll ask if I don’t. You can go back to flirting with the receptionist.”

“Hey now. You know I’m not into Aussies.”

“Is that what that ridiculous accent is?” Regina sniffs, staring at the form and starting to fill in the basics. “What’s our insurance number?”

“It would be quicker to just let me do it, you know. Archie already sent your notes over, so if Gold calls you, you can head straight in without worrying about this paperwork.”

“How did Archie take the news?” Regina can’t quite hide the malicious spike of glee at his failure being thrust in his face. She only wishes she’d thought to deliver the news herself.

“He wants what’s best for you. Said to let him know if he could assist any further, the usual.”

“Oh.” Regina is deflated by his boring, predictable goodness. One of these days, someone will live down to her expectations. “How nice.”

“Mrs Swan-Mills?” The receptionist calls out. “Right this way,” she says, and Regina follows her down the hallway.

***

“Ah, Regina,” Gold greets her. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“You have?”

“Since Dr Hopper sent your files over, yes. You’re an interesting read. Take a seat, please.”

He walks with a cane, leaning heavily on it as he crosses the office to take his seat. The room is straight out of the seventies, the conversation space sunken slightly below the level of the rest of the floor, and that’s where Gold takes his position on one of the two large leather chairs that sit on opposite sides of a glass coffee table. No magazines litter the surface of this one, it’s clear and under the soft lighting it seems as reflective as a mirror from where Regina stands, still unbuttoning her coat. 

“No need to be scared, Regina,” Gold says, indicating the other seat. Clearly the use of her first name so soon is intended to put her at ease, but Regina is nothing if not contrary.

“I’d prefer we stuck to titles for now, Dr. Gold. Until we know each other a little better.”

She crosses the room in measured steps, ensuring her nerves don’t show. Sitting down is a careful production, as she folds her coat over her arms and crosses her legs. 

“Very well, Mrs Swan,” he amends, and Regina clears her throat loudly.

“It’s Swan-Mills,” she corrects. “Swan is my wife’s name. We’ve always used both.”

“Duly noted,” Gold scribbles something on the legal pad on his lap. Regina hopes it’s annoyance at her rigidity. She has no intention of making this any easier than it should be.

She looks away for a second, blinking a few times to compose herself, but when she looks back Gold has transformed entirely. His hair is windswept and wild, and his somber gray suit has been replaced by a leather jumpsuit that wouldn’t look out of place on a heavy metal guitarist. It makes Regina’s breath catch in her throat, but then she blinks once more and the sober psychiatrist is in front of her once more.

“I’m sorry, what?” She asks.

“I said, let’s get started,” Gold repeats. “Are you nervous, dearie? You seem a little out of sorts.”

“I am,” Regina admits. “Your accent is… strange. You’re not from around here, are you?”

“From far across the sea,” Gold confirms. 

“But not Australian, like your receptionist.”

“Does that matter?”

“No. I just noticed, that’s all. When you don’t notice things as often as I do… well, details become so important.”

“I’m sure they do. How are you feeling, generally?”

“Fine,” Regina puts her coat down on the chair next to her, it’s making her hands too hot to be wrapped up in it. The silence stretches out between them. “It’s your turn, now,” she nudges Gold. “You ask the questions, remember?”

“Fair enough,” he says, a hint of a chuckle creeping into his words. “Let’s get to know each other first. Your notes say you’re resistant to the idea of new medication, is that right?”

“I’m not being difficult. It doesn’t _work_.”

“Well, talk therapy and medication usually work best in tandem,” Gold warns, his posture straightening and both hands resting on his cane where it stands between his knees. “But if you’re willing to work with me, we can try psychotherapy alone, at first.”

“This isn’t some kind of trick?” Regina can’t help but be wary. How many times had Archie offered something for a week or two, only for months to pass and the dosage to creep up? Nothing at all seems too good to be true.

“Why would it be? But like I said, let’s get to know each other a bit better. Tell me… tell me about the last time you were truly happy.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Regina closes her eyes, and searches for the feeling. She feels fragments tugging at her memory, hears ghosts of laughs and sees flashes of smiles. But no one solid memory forms for her.

“Were you happy when you got married?” Gold suggests, prodding gently. 

“Oh, I thought so,” Regina says, breathing out in relief at having a subject to latch on to. “I really thought so, you know?”

“And you say that like it’s different,” Gold remarks. “That thinking you’re happy and being happy aren’t necessarily the same thing?”

“Of course not,” Regina scoffs. “Most people who think they’re happy just haven’t thought about it long enough. Honestly, most people who think they’re happy seem kind of… simple, to me.”

“And you’re not simple, are you? No, you’re a complicated woman, Regina.”

She lets it slide this time, leaning into the conversation at the first glimmer of someone who might finally understand. 

“I don’t think I’m any more complicated than anyone else,” she lies. She sees them every day, these simple people for whom happiness is attainable, a near permanent state of affairs. They sleep at night and feel calm during the day, and they only see the things they’re supposed to.

“Well, let’s leave your wedding alone for now,” Gold suggests. “Were you happy the day you met your son for the first time?”

“My son?”

“You adopted him when he was just a few weeks old, is that right?”

“You want me to talk about my son?”

“Of course,” Gold insists. “Particularly why he’s still around.”

“He was just a baby,” Regina goes back to the familiar, to the part of the story that doesn’t hurt quite so badly. “I had fallen asleep in my office working late. I woke up just after dawn, to the sound of a baby crying. Someone had left him right there on the steps of City Hall.”

“So you took him in? That’s generous of you.” Gold is scribbling intently now, his eyes flicking up to her every few moments. 

“I had no choice,” Regina breathes. “I saw him and… I just knew. I was meant to find him. I went to the Sheriff’s office, filed a missing person’s report. The Deputy helped me, but Storybrooke has no real facility for abandoned children. It was send him to Boston, or…”

“Take him in. I’m looking at the dates here, you must have been quite young yourself.”

“I was old enough to be Mayor. My mother… she wasn’t happy. It’s what finally made her move out, in fact. She said she was too old to be subjected to a screaming baby every night.”

“You did this all by yourself?”

“No,” Regina corrects. “The Deputy I mentioned… she’s the Sheriff now. That’s my wife, Emma. We were dating then. Well, fooling around to be more accurate. I thought telling her I’d filed paperwork to adopt would send her running for the hills… she proposed, instead.”

“Because she loved you.”

“Yes. I suppose. I always wondered if partly…”

“Go on,” Gold urges. 

“It seems disloyal. And God knows my paranoia is usually a symptom of something else, with no basis at all. But there were times I think if she did fall in love with me, it was because of Henry.”

“Why? She wanted to be a parent?”

“No,” Regina says. “Quite the opposite. She put the ‘free’ in ‘free spirit’ back then. Always disappearing, and Storybrooke was the only place she’d ever stayed for more than six months. But she was a foster child, I don’t think the system was very kind to her. I think she saw what I was doing as ‘saving’ Henry from that life. So I wonder sometimes if it wasn’t more about him, than about us.”

“You’re being very honest with me,” Gold observes, putting his cane to one side but continuing to scratch his pen across the paper. “I thought you’d be more resistant.”

“Isn’t honesty the point?” Regina sighs, leaning back in her chair. “I haven’t talked about any of this in a long time.”

“You liked me better as a baby,” Henry teases, from somewhere behind her. Regina steels herself and doesn’t turn around. “So you found another headshrinker to tell you I’m just a ghost, huh?”

“I think we’re going to work very well together,” Gold announces. “I’m going to recommend we see each other three times a week, at first. Will that be a problem?”

“Not if the insurance covers it,” Regina fires back. “You’re a bit of a drive, but we’ll think of something.”

***

She’s making dinner when she hears Emma’s car pull into the driveway. Snow is avoiding Regina, reading on the porch, and so Regina steps out into the hallway to overhear the daily report trading between them. They’re not even careful enough to check if she’s around first.

“How is she?” Emma asks, keys jangling in her hand the way she does when she’s impatient.

“Cooking,” Snow reports back. “I haven’t heard any screams or smelled burning yet.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Emma warns, and Regina frowns at her wife’s worst habit. “Can you take her to her appointment on Friday if I give you the keys to her car?”

“Seriously?” Snow’s voice changes entirely, genuine excitement there now. “Is that why you taught me how to drive stick all last week?”

“Maybe,” Emma admits. “I just can’t take the morning is all, not when I’ve been out yesterday and tomorrow as well.”

“Three times a week. Isn’t that a lot?” Snow asks, while Regina fumes at the thought of her beloved car being blithely handed over to their daughter without even the pretense of asking her first. Unless they discussed it and she just doesn’t remember, but the surge in her blood pressure right now suggests she would have.

“It’s what this new doctor recommends.” Emma sounds so weary that guilt gnaws at Regina again, and she starts moving back towards the kitchen before they catch her eavesdropping. 

“Is she ever going to be okay?” Snow asks, stopping Regina in her tracks. “We’re just never going to get rid of him, are we? And PS, this is one of those times where it’s fine to be like all the other grown-ups, and lie your ass off.”

“I don’t know,” Emma admits, and Regina walks away once more. 

***

“Two weeks,” Gold sighs. “This is your seventh appointment, and we’re still no closer to the root of your depression. I’m going to assume that’s by design.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Regina replies, folding her hands in her lap. 

“We need to address the reason your son is still around,” Gold reminds her. “That is why your wife brought you to me in the first place, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“I’d like to try something different,” Gold leans in, his eyes gleaming at the prospect of shaking things up a little. Regina can’t decide whether she hates him or not, but this morning feels a lot further from ‘not’. “When discussing such… sensitive matters, the brain can form a lot of defenses to prevent you talking. I’ve found hypnosis works a particular kind of magic.”

“You mean you want to cure me with a cheap party trick? Clucking like a chicken is the answer to all my problems?” Regina is scornful, and for once it feels utterly justified. 

“In a medical setting, hypnosis is far more powerful. But I can throw in the clucking if you’d like.”

“Even if I didn’t find it ludicrous,” Regina argues. “I don’t think I can be hypnotized. I’m not the type, really. You have to be susceptible, right?”

“No harm in trying, then,” Gold snaps, before regaining his cool with a forced smile. “Put both feet flat on the floor for me, dearie. And unfold those hands, place your palms flat, one on each knee.”

“If you insist,” Regina concedes, following the instructions. She wishes she’d worn something different, it feels odd to be acting like a puppet while dressed in clothes that would have worked in her Mayoral wardrobe: a stiff black skirt that skims her knees, with patent boots beneath it. Her blouse is almost new, a brilliant white that took just a little too much starch on its last trip to the dry cleaners. It all feels too stiff for such a stupid exercise.

“Now close your eyes,” Gold continues. “And breathe. Ah, ah--slower. Deeper… like that, yes.” Regina, despite herself, feels relaxation creeping in. It’s rare that she gets time like this, to do nothing more than sit and breathe. Of course, Gold’s voice interrupts the calm, but it’s so much softer than usual. 

“I want you to picture yourself walking down a hallway,” Gold tells her, and the image of the hallway here pops into Regina’s head unbidden. 

“Walking,” Regina confirms, no small amount of snark in the single word.

“Now at the end of the hallway you come to some stairs. Walk down, straight down, step by step by step,” comes Gold’s slow instruction.

“Stairs?” Regina is amused now, no denying it. She mimics the motion of someone walking downstairs, but doesn’t move her feet. 

“Now at the bottom of the stairs is darkness, but I want you to keep walking. Approach that darkness, even as you feel yourself resisting it. 

“What about turning on a light?” Regina can’t resist, cracking one eyelid to watch for a reaction. The frown is pronounced, and she enjoys it. “You know, safety first with all this darkness.”

“Again,” Gold keeps the edge from his voice, soft and insistent again. “You’re walking down a hallway again, and you come to a door. You’ve never seen this door before.” He pauses, Regina waits. “Open the door, Regina.”

The image forms so clearly that she forgets to breathe for a moment, and all of a sudden she’s not in his wood-panelled office anymore, and the lights are cool and blue instead of the yellow glow she’s been used to. Regina’s all alone in a room, facing another set of doors that are spread out over all of the walls, each door a different bright color or elaborate shape. 

“Can you hear me?” Comes Gold’s voice, from somewhere off in the distance.

“Yes,” she whispers.

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Good, now let’s begin, Regina. Make up your mind for me, right now, that you’re going to explore yourself and your history. Tell me what you see.”

“More doors. Lots of them.”

“Behind each of them is a memory, Regina. Some of them are your favorites, warm and happy. Others you’ve locked away, to protect yourself. We’re going to unlock one today, and you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“Pick one, Regina. Tell me your story.”

“The blue one,” Regina says, although he isn’t there with her to see it. “Well, it’s what they call duck egg blue. We had drapes in that color, when I was a child. I thought it was cold, but Mother insisted it looked classic. Appropriate.”

“Is your mother behind that door, Regina?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She’s angry with me,” Regina feels herself trembling as the room shifts and becomes the sitting room back at her house. Mother had commandeered this room as her personal kingdom, but for years Regina has left it untouched apart from a bi-weekly dusting of the furniture. “Over prom, of all things.”

“You got drunk?”

“Yes, but that’s not why,” Regina mutters. “She wanted me to go with the son of one of her friends. It’s a society thing, you know? The most eligible sons of the most important families. I went with Daniel instead. We drank some Zima, and we left after three dances to… well. That hardly matters, now.”

“Did you love him?”

“Infatuation,” Regina confesses. “I didn’t know I was attracted to women, not then. So I worked very hard on finding even one boy that I could try having a crush on. Daniel was the only one.”

“You didn’t stay together?”

“Mother saw to that. She just wanted the best for me, I know that now. There was a robbery, at the jewelry store. She was the only witness, and she saw Daniel do it. He must have, because he gave me a beautiful bracelet for going to prom with him. He couldn’t have afforded it, and I suppose I knew that.”

“He got in trouble?”

“He was eighteen. He went to prison.”

“And by the time he got out?” Gold presses, and Regina feels her chest tighten.

“He didn’t. There was a fight, while he was in there. Not a riot, exactly, but some of the inmates… he was trying to help a guard who’d been attacked, and someone stabbed him. He didn’t survive the surgery.”

“I’m sorry,” Gold says, and in the echoes he sounds quite genuine.

“I’d like to come back now,” Regina pleads. 

“Of course.” She feels a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “All you have to do is wake up.”

She blinks, and the office is there, Gold standing over her with concern in his eyes.

“You did very well. We’ll pick this up next time.”

***

“Regina,” Emma knocks on the doorframe of their bedroom. “You’re coming home from these sessions in tears, every time now. Is this helping, or…?”

Regina nods. “I don’t think it’s supposed to be easy.”

“I never could stand watching you cry,” Emma says, sitting beside her on the bed, plucking the hand cream from Regina’s nightstand and applying some to her own, more calloused hands. “You think you’ll make Snow’s recital next week?”

“Of course,” Regina says, taking Emma’s hand and rubbing the rest of the lotion in for her. 

***

“Another door, Regina,” Gold instructs. 

“Aren’t you getting bored of this by now?” Regina asks the disembodied voice. “My angsty teenage memories aren’t the stuff of thrillers, Doctor.”

“Tell yourself you’re strong enough, and tell me another story,” Gold says. “It’s your past, Regina. You have to own it.”

She opens the red door, with the holly wreath on it. It’s their first house, where Emma had decorated the whole thing as an engagement present. Mother had protested so furiously, but Regina packed her things and left with Henry in the middle of the night. He hadn’t cried, even once. Like he’d known.

“We lived there six months until Mother passed. Then it seemed silly to live in three rooms when we’d inherited a mansion. But I still miss this house. When I go walking in the woods, sometimes, I always feel better when I see it.”

“Who lives there now?”

“No one. We rented it out over the years, but never quite had the heart to sell it.”

“You’re not moving on,” Gold accuses. “Are you seeing the theme here, Regina? Holding onto the past can hurt you.”

“The things that are supposed to heal me hurt just as much,” Regina protests. 

“Sometimes it does hurt to be healed. But you can withstand it.”

***

“Apologies for the switch to afternoons,” Gold says as Regina walks in. “I know you have a routine, but I’ve had some family issues this week.”

“Need to talk?” Regina teases.

“No, my son and his troubles are less than riveting. Now, we were really getting somewhere last time. Let’s pick up where we left off.”

Once more Regina goes through the simple routine, still expecting it to fail and gasping as once again she feels herself fall into the trance. 

“Which door today, Regina?”

She picks the varnished wood and glass of a hospital swing door, and there’s an eagerness in Gold’s response when she tells him, but it’s not that hospital, not yet.

“We had already filled out the paperwork for Snow, when it happened. We knew it would take a few more months because she hadn’t been abandoned. And with everything… Emma thought it might help, to still go ahead. The adoption agency were wary, but she convinced them. I almost blew it, picking her up at the hospital. I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t bring myself to hold her. And I think she knows that, even now.”

“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned Snow in weeks of therapy,” Gold points out. “I saw her name in your notes and I wondered how long it would take.”

“Huh,” Regina answers. “I didn’t realize.”

“You need clarity, Regina. Snow is your daughter. Your living, breathing daughter. From what I understand she’s a bright girl. These visions of yours… they’re no more than a defense. And Henry doesn’t need you the way Snow does. Can you see that now?”

“So he says,” Henry snorts. He’s taken to sitting on the desk in the corner of Gold’s office lately, but he hasn’t followed her through the doors before now.

“You have to realize that the temporary comfort of a son you miss is harmful for you, and your family. After all, he’d be eighteen by now. Isn’t that the time he should be off to college, or moving out?”

“Snow’s going to college in the fall,” Regina replies. “She thinks I’ve forgotten that, too.”

“Unresolved loss causes depression,” Gold states. “You know this. And fearing further loss causes anxiety. You know how fragile your memories are, and so you hold on too tight. But that only makes the fear of the day you’ll lose them so much worse. Do you see?”

“Yes,” Regina whispers. “But how do I let go?”

“Go home,” Gold instructs. “Clean out his room. You said last week that you kept his room exactly as it was. Give his things away, to another family who needs them. And spend some time with your daughter. Ask her to help, if you think she’ll want to.”

“That will work?”

“It’s the best advice I have right now,” Gold says. “Wake up, Regina.”

“I have to go home,” Regina says, blinking in the light. 

“Yes. It’s time.”

***

“Hey Ma,” Snow accepts Emma’s hug with less reluctance than usual. “Where’s Mom?”

“Uh, she’s meeting me out front,” Emma says, hoping her smile isn’t too fake. “She wanted to go pick out a new scarf, and you know how she is about accessories.”

“I was worried her therapy appointment would run long or something,” Snow says, violin case still firmly in hand. “I have to go warm up, okay?”

“We’ll cheer extra loud,” Emma promises. 

She walks out of the gymnasium door, back around the front of the school where the last of the proud parental crowd is trickling in. Regina had insisted on being dropped at the house, promising to meet Emma in time for the recital, claiming the hour of peace and the walk would be good for her. As the clock ticks closer to 7.30, Emma feels the familiar sinking sensation of disappointment. 

Another round of excuses. Emma leaves the second ticket with one of the kids playing usher for the night and goes to take her seat. Snow should know she has at least one proud parent tonight.

***

She should have told Emma about this, Regina realizes as she opens the door to the old nursery. The abundance of rooms made it possible to give Snow her own without ever touching this one, and Emma has been the one to keep on top of it, although everything but the crib has been packed away. It’s dusty, unlike anywhere else in the house, but Regina doesn’t want to disturb even that, at first.

“Mom?” He asks, and when she turns around he’s standing over his own crib. “Hard to believe I ever fit in here, huh?”

“You should go, sweetheart,” she says. “I have some tidying to do.”

But he stays. And he watches. 

Watches her open the drawers and take out the remaining clothes, mostly white and pale, pale blue, because they weren’t particularly strident about gender roles, not back then. There’s a box already half-filled with unused cloth diapers and onesies, so Regina adds these until the box is full. One by one, she gathers the boxes Emma never quite finished and piles them up by the door, ready to be taken to Goodwill or wherever someone else decides. That part, Regina will not face.

She goes to the window, watching the sun begin to set. She isn’t late, yet. There’s still plenty of time to walk to the school and catch the whole recital. On the window sill a stuffed elephant has been abandoned, a varnished wooden box his only companion. Regina can’t place it, doesn’t remember ever buying it, but when she lifts the lid the tinkling music is as familiar as her own name.

Brahm’s Lullaby, or the ‘da-da-da song’ as Emma used to call it, became the only thing that would soothe him after a while. At first Regina had played it for him on the piano, the vibrations through his carry seat helping as much as the music. But as the sleepless nights had dragged on she’d been too tired, and Emma’s gift of the music box had been thoughtful enough to provoke another flood of tears; Henry had been fascinated by it.

“You never hum that under your breath anymore,” he says from the corner. “You used to, at first.”

“When you were younger,” Regina remembers. “Or, you appeared younger. That’s what the doctor would say.”

“You’ve put everything away this time, huh?”

“Everything but this,” Regina says, putting the box on the floor and letting it play. “And your blanket,” she says, noticing it sticking out through the bars of the crib. She walks over to pick it up, holding the soft wool to her nose and inhaling deeply. “It doesn’t smell like you anymore.”

His name is sewn through the wool in purple ribbon on one corner, a gift from Granny Lucas who ran the diner for so many years. She’d knitted a blanket like this for every child born in Storybrooke for thirty years, she’d said. Henry being adopted shouldn’t make him any different to the other children.

“You should have grown up,” Regina whispers, and she knows he understands even though the words are muffled by the blanket. “You should have had your prom, and gone to college, just like Snow is about to. You would have met a lovely girl, and I would have hated her at first. But then the grandchildren would have come, and we’d give him or her this blanket, sew their name right into it next to yours. That was how it was supposed to go, Henry.”

“I would have skipped prom,” Henry teases. “Gone drinking with my friends instead.”

“I can see you in your tuxedo,” Regina sighs, and when she pulls the blanket away, he’s suitable transformed. The jacket is white, the pants black, and the flower in his buttonhole is a rose from their garden, red as blood.

“Well, maybe I’d dance with you in the house, just one time. Then totally blow off the actual prom.”

“You have to give your mom a dance,” Regina agrees, nodding along as the lullaby starts again. “I think that’s a rule.”

“Then dance with me,” Henry says, taking her hand when she lets go of the blanket. She folds into him, the simple shuffling steps easy to follow. “See? Isn’t this better than all those people telling you I’m not real?”

“Yes,” Regina says, and when did she start crying, exactly? She can feel the rest of the memories bubbling under the surface, the unavoidable tug of what comes next, after all this happiness and the perfect room for their perfect little boy. “I wish I could stay in a world that has you in it, Henry. But I have to get better.”

“But you’d be happy, in a world with me,” Henry turns her own words back on her, muffled against the top of her head, his lips moving against her hair. “Don’t you ever want to come with me, Mom? I always come to you.”

“I don’t know how,” Regina admits, and the music box must need cranking again, because the notes are slowing down and spacing out, adagio to lento, to larghissimo and then only silence. 

“Sure you do,” Henry whispers. “You know just how to come with me, Mommy. Don’t you think it’s about time?”

***

“Regina!” Emma yells as she storms through the front door. Snow has run off somewhere with David, because noticing Regina’s absence apparently triggered some sort of meltdown, three notes into her performance. The whole school is buzzing with gossip once more, and in pushing her way out into the night, Emma overheard more than one faux-sympathetic ‘well, with the mother she has’ and ‘it’s to be expected’. Only a desire to keep her Sheriff’s badge stopped her from silencing the bitches with her fists.

Silence echoes back at her, and Emma makes her way up the stairs without kicking her shoes off first. When Regina retreats, it’s almost always to the bedroom, and so Emma starts there but finds it undisturbed from when they left that afternoon. Snow’s room, less likely but not impossible if Regina’s feeling guilty about skipping the recital, comes up empty too. Great. A game of hide and seek to go with the inevitable fight. There are days when Emma honestly doesn’t know why she hasn’t run screaming from this goddamned house.

She wouldn’t even think to try the old nursery, but for the unexpected light showing through the crack at the bottom of the door. If Emma had turned the overhead light on like a calm, responsible person, she might not even have noticed it. 

She takes a deep breath, and swallows a couple of times. Weird is when something doesn’t usually happen. Regina going into a room she hasn’t touched in over a decade, like one of the tragic heroines in those classic novels she loves so much, that’s downright red alert status. Something is wrong, and Emma’s the only one here to deal with it.

It would be so nice to be wrong. Wrong would be embarrassing, but then the relief would come and Emma could hide it all in a bottle of beer or a shouting match. She pushes the door open, inch by creaking inch, and it’s not until it stops making noise that Emma realizes her eyes are closed.

The smell isn’t quite overpowering, in fact it’s almost sweet until the coppery notes hit her nose. Emma forces herself to open her eyes and the red, deep and swirling like a decent Merlot is the first thing she sees. 

Phone. She needs her phone. Fumbling, she almost drops it but no, God, no not there, don’t in Regina’s… “This is Sheriff Swan, I need an ambulance at my house immediately.”

“Sheriff--”

“108 Mifflin. Get an ambulance here. Now!”

She hangs up, and pulls the blanket with its creamy wool turned red out of Regina’s limp hands.

“Oh Regina,” Emma says through the first surge of tears. “What did you do?”


	3. A Light In The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma's discovery at the house has far reaching consquences, not least of which is Snow going off the rails. Gold becomes further involved with Regina's care.
> 
> Trigger warnings: suicide, suicidal ideation, hospitalisation, sedation, blood, drug use, institutionalisation, ECT, electroshock therapy.

“Snow,” David sighs, nudging her in the ribs. “We can’t stay here all night.”

“Yeah, we can.”

“Your cell is still ringing,” he points out, the blue glow in the corner of the barn flashing once more. “Your parents obviously aren’t giving up.”

“Let them run the battery down. Did you get some beer?”

“Yeah, James has a cooler in his room. Dad turns a blind eye to that.” David offers up a Miller Lite. “Sorry, he only drinks crap beer.”

“All the better to wash these down with, I guess,” Snow says, pulling something from her pocket and then opening her fist to show David. “You want some?”

“The hell?”

“Well, if my Mom isn’t going to take them… you’re the one who told me all the jocks and ‘cool’ kids raid their parents’ medicine cabinets. Guess I’m just catching up.”

“What is that?”

“Uh, Valium, I think? There’s a bunch of different ones, I thought we could do like a whole ‘suck it and see’ thing, you know? Oh, don’t give me that face, Mr PermaStoned.”

“You’re like this secret junkie criminal and I had no idea,” David huffs. “And weed is totally different. Your shit is totally inorganic.”

“Suit yourself.” Snow shrugs, and washes her little handful down with a hearty swig of the lukewarm beer. She moves back to the hay bales in the corner, throwing herself down like it’s her bed at home. David can’t stay huffy for long, and a few minutes later he’s crawling on top of her, teasing with beer-flavored kisses. “You ready to trade in that V-chip yet, Nolan?”

“I thought we agreed--”

“People change their minds all the time, David. And I changed mine.”

“And this has nothing to do with you storming off stage halfway through your recital?” David isn’t stupid, but Snow can already feel that she has his attention.

“Do you care?”

“I care about you,” David tells her, and god help him but he really means it. 

“Then care enough to do it properly. You got protection?”

“In my wallet,” David can’t help sighing as Snow slips her hands between them.

“Then let’s go.”

***

“Dr. Gold?” Belle doesn’t remember the walk from her desk, but here she is knocking on the door of his office.

“Belle, I’m doing my notes. I asked not to be disturbed this evening.” He looks tired again, his hair hanging in his eyes not doing enough to hide the dark circles. 

“The hospital just called for you.”

“I’m not in for consults until Friday,” he snaps. “Honestly, can’t you keep track of my schedule?”

“It’s one of your patients, Doctor. Regina Swan-Mills? She’s just been admitted at Storybrooke General.”

“I’m sure they can give her a sedative without my say-so. You have to stand up to these pushy nurses, dearie. They walk all over you.”

“No, they don’t. They’re calling because she’s been admitted for attempted suicide. They’re working on her now, but there’s a chance--”

“Shit.”

“That’s what I thought. You want me to call your driver?”

“I suppose you’d better.”

“I’m sorry,” Belle says as he leverages himself out from behind the desk.

“I’m not the one that needs your sympathy, Belle,” Dr. Gold reminds her, leaning heavier than usual on his cane as he moves across the office. “Now, be a dear and get that car waiting out front for me.”

***

Emma’s thumb hovers over Ruby’s name for the fiftieth time, but she doesn’t make the call. Snow’s phone has finally run out of battery or been switched off, and although she’s most likely at the Nolan’s, Emma doesn’t dare set foot outside the waiting room. To leave now would be tempting fate one time too many.

“You must be Emma,” an unfamiliar voice says, the voice has a hint of Scottish brogue that makes Emma think of Sean Connery for a fleeting second. “I’m Dr. Gold.”

“They called you?”

“It’s standard procedure, when the patient is already in treatment. Do you feel up to telling me what happened? Or I can just find her chart.”

“I…”

“The chart it is. I’ll be back in a moment. Can I get you a coffee or something?” The Doctor seems to be offering no more than comfort, but Emma knows the sight of an ass being covered when she sees it. 

“Sure. A latte, if they have it.”

“I’m sure they do.”

***

“Gold!” The nurse calls out from behind her desk. “Been a while since we caught one of your loonies. Losing your touch, old man?”

“Evening to you too, Nurse Ratched.”

“You know I take that as a compliment, right? That lady ran a tight ship, there’s no denying that.”

“It’s good to have goals,” Gold remarks. “Got a chart for me?”

“Swan-Mills? Yeah, she’s still in there. You can follow the blood trail, since the cleaners are slacking off again.”

“Your charm really warms the cockles of my heart,” he snaps, flicking through the papers on the clipboard, frowning at the ER attending’s scrawl, worse even than his own. “Let’s see… patient found unconscious at home. Multiple wounds to both wrists, self-inflicted. Likely implement the scissors from a sewing kit found on scene.”

“They never quite finish the job, do they?” The nurse sighs, her face darkening at the report.

“Sutures, gauze wrapping. Antibiotic drip administered,” Gold continues, mostly to himself. “Patient sedated and restrained. Psych hold authorized, pending treating doctor’s consult. Well, damn.”

“Looks like a busy night for both of us,” she chimes in. “You’re gonna need that coffee.”

“It’s not for me,” Gold answers, before turning on his heel and stalking back towards the waiting area. He really thought he’d done better than this.

***

“This is… really bad coffee. Like, worse than I make,” Emma says, but she keeps sipping it. “Can you explain it again?”

“The electricity required is really very gentle these days. Not much more power than it would take to light the bulb in your bathroom,” Gold explains. 

“I just… I can’t believe they still do that. I saw it on some cable show not that long ago… they made out like it was some torture device back in the 60s. I guess I don’t have to tell you that Regina couldn’t even watch it.”

“We’ve learned a lot since then. ECT is indicated because, well, it’s standard at this point. Regina has a long history of drug regimens and talk therapy, but also a pattern of resistance that leads to crises like those we’ve seen recently. Now that she’s suicidal, it really is our best option.”

“It’s terrifying,” Emma whines. “Like, horror movie terrifying. How can I do this to her? I’ve made decisions before, when she couldn’t… but nothing like this.”

“It’s very safe, the modern procedure,” Gold urges. “Our success rate is up over 80%, almost unheard of with other methods. The most likely side effect is memory loss, but it won’t be total, and it won’t be permanent.”

“Christ.”

“It won’t hurt her. It’s not a painful procedure, I promise,” Gold continues.

“And it’s not just the consequence of you pushing too hard? Of manipulating her into doing something she wasn’t ready for?”

“Regina made that decision,” Gold corrects. “There are no instructions in my course of treatment, only discussion and suggestion.”

“They’ve barely finished stitching her wrists,” Emma pleads. “Am I supposed to just say ‘sure, hook her up’?”

“We’ll wait for her to heal, until she’s lucid again. Might be 48 hours, possibly 72. Then we’ll need consent from both of you, once the hold runs out she’ll have the power to decide. I’d recommend you show her the merits of it.”

“You want me to talk her into it?”

“Just show her that it’s the best option. For all of you. I’ll go and see her doctors now. I’ll leave the form for you to sign.” Gold stands, leaning on his cane to offer a reassuring pat on Emma’s shoulder. “I know it’s hard when you’re not able to talk to her about it. You feel like she’s disappeared on you right now. But she’ll come round soon, and you can take the chance to find a more permanent solution to this illness. I think it’s long past due.”

“I don’t know if I can. I’ve been trying to save her for so long…”

“You don’t have to do it alone,” Gold insists. “That’s what we’re here for.”

“I don’t have an alternative?” Emma wants a miracle right now. She wants a fairy godmother and a goddamn magic wand.

“ECT means she’ll be in for 10-15 days, and she’ll go home with you much better. Otherwise, we hold her for 48 hours and she goes home as is. To try again. You should clean up, dearie. The nurses will give you scrubs to change into.”

“This isn’t fair,” Emma groans. But by then, she’s talking to herself.

***

“Regina?”

“I think I prefer Mrs Swan-Mills,” she croaks, head swimming from the sedatives that will pull her under again before long. They gave her the baby dose at first, in case she’d been lying about not taking any pills before doing it.

“Your wife is in the waiting room,” Gold replies. “She’s very upset, as you can imagine. Been here all night, just like I have.”

“Here to guilt me?” Regina asks.

“No, not at all.” Gold moves closer, checking the pouches on her IV line before lifting her right arm and peeking beneath the bandage. “You were thorough, I’ll give you that.”

“What do you want?” She asks. “I doubt I’ll be awake for long.”

“We need to talk about your treatment,” Gold sighs, settling into a chair beside the bed, the scraping sound of it putting Regina’s teeth on edge. “I’ve discussed ECT with your wife. I feel it’s the logical next step.”

“You want to fry me?” Regina can taste stale cotton and something like burnt food at the back of her mouth. “Like hell.”

“There aren’t many side effects,” Gold continues, as though she hadn’t responded at all. “You might feel a little hungover, afterwards.”

“I haven’t been able to drink in years, with all the pill-popping. So you’ll forgive me if I’m not thrilled at the prospect of reliving my college days.”

“Mom.”

Oh, Henry. She gives him a look, because talking to him in front of the shrink is just asking for more trouble at this stage.

“It causes brain damage,” Henry continues. “And you know they’re just doing it to get rid of me. We were so close to being together for real, Mom. Don’t let this Ewan McGregor wannabe stop us.”

Regina snorts at that. Fuck.

“He’s here, isn’t he?” Gold asks. “Hello, Henry.”

“Can you see him?” Regina is sitting up then, the adrenalin of someone else finally understanding blowing her medication out of the water. “Over there, by the chair… oh. You can’t.”

“Because he isn’t here, Regina,” Gold reminds her. “You’ve been a good mother, caring about him all this time. But it’s time to let him go. This treatment will give you a clean slate, a way to deal with your feelings about him without the same strength of feeling about the loss. It gives you… distance, you might say. A chance to work through it.”

“Mom--”

“I’m not consenting,” Regina yells. “I’m not going to be your Sylvia Plath, Gold. I just need you people to give me something that works. Or just let me go. But you’re not wiring me up to a machine. This isn’t some horror movie, doctor.”

“Well, we have time to consider,” Gold dismisses her protest with a wave of his hand. “Shall I send your wife in before you drift off again?”

“No,” Regina whispers, the fight to stay awake already seeping from her body. “Later.”

***

“Where the hell have you been?” Emma demands, switching on the porch light as Snow saunters up to the front door. “It’s almost breakfast time.”

“I was with David,” Snow answers, apparently too tired or too indifferent to lie. “My battery died, so I couldn’t call.”

“I’ve been calling you,” Emma continues. “I got plenty of calls in before the line went dead.”

“Someone should take a hint. Just like I decided to, over Mom’s no-show. Why are you dressed like a nurse? Leroy puke on you again?”

“Snow--” Emma follows her daughter inside, both of them making a beeline for the kitchen. “Before you start on her, I have to tell you something.”

“I don’t care. No, let me phrase that better. I care about what’s up with her as much as she cares about me. So yeah, I guess I don’t care at all.”

“Don’t talk like that, not right now. I know you’re mad, I know you’re tired--”

“It was the one big night I have all year. The one thing I’m good at, and yet again she can’t pull her shit together for an hour. I wasn’t even asking her to stay for the whole thing. So I hope she got her nap. Or her manic cleaning fit. Or whatever the _fuck_ was more important than me.”

“She’s in the hospital,” Emma interrupts.

“Really? Bullshit, you wouldn’t be here if she was,” Snow picks a banana from the bowl, regarding Emma with suspicion. Emma looks away, pretending she can’t see the blemish of a hickey on Snow’s pale neck.

“She doesn’t want to see me yet,” Emma sighs, sitting at the counter and rooting through the fruit herself. “It’s pretty bad this time, Snow.”

“What? She pulled a muscle from how hard she ignores me? Boo hoo.”

“She was cleaning out… she was trying to get rid of Henry’s things. I think her therapist advised it. And I guess that was a step too far right now, because…” Emma loses her words then, and the tears come instead. Snow is there a moment later, the hug slightly awkward but welcome all the same. 

“Did she…?”

“Wrists. It was pretty close. The nurse said if I’d gotten home just a minute or two later, they might not have been able to get her back.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Emma agrees, not even bothering to rein in Snow’s cursing. 

“But she hasn’t been this bad since… hell, I don’t even know. I mean, what pills does she get this time? Does she need another doctor?”

“They want to try ECT,” Emma groans, and it’s not fair, not even slightly, to burden a teenager with this conversation, but the sheer scale of it has left Emma feeling like someone drowning. Everywhere she looks the argument gets more complicated, and she’s a little less sure. Snow, at least, is bound to have some kind of concrete reaction. That way, maybe Emma will know whether she agrees or disagrees.

“So… ABC, LMNOP… what is that?”

“It’s electroshock,” Emma says. “I mean, not all Cuckoo’s Nest or whatever, it’s different now. Apparently she’ll barely feel a thing.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No. It’s what the doctor suggested. The other doctors at the hospital seem to agree with him. I don’t think we can risk doing nothing… if she comes home, there’s nothing to stop her trying again.”

“She’ll hate it,” Snow says, her voice suddenly very small. Emma looks at her and the bratty teenager fades away, leaving the sweet, serious dark-haired little girl who would follow Regina around adoringly, always wanting just one more hug or to tug on Regina’s necklaces one more time. Regina used to wear the most beautiful necklaces. Emma can’t remember when she stopped. “Is she scared?”

“We need her to agree to it,” Emma explains. “I’m gonna take a shower, change, and go talk to her about it. I think it might be the big step we’ve all been putting off for a long time.”

“She won’t be, like… a vegetable?” Snow asks, and it breaks Emma’s heart to see how hard their daughter is trying to feign indifference the one time it’s absolutely okay to feel.

“No. Maybe some short-term memory loss, headaches. Nothing worse than all the pills over the years, pretty much.” Emma reaches out for her daughter, but Snow’s already moving away.

“Well, do whatever you think is best,” Snow says, straightening her shoulders and slipping the mask back into place, all too damn easily. “She always gets over it eventually.”

***

Someone has to clean up, Emma knows there’s no avoiding it. Calling in the town cleaning service will only fuel the gossip mill, and asking Snow to help would probably qualify as child abuse. Since these clothes are already dirty, she might as well just pick up the mop, and the bucket and…

In a minute. Just a minute. 

She can still see the pool of blood, the footprints of the paramedics spreading it this way and that, trying to keep their uniforms clean as they put Regina on the stretcher, binding her wrists tight and fast, muttering between themselves. Emma stood by helplessly, bloodied hands held out in front of her like the most amateur Lady Macbeth. 

_Sometimes the patient recovers enough… that first surge of energy, of feeling better, is enough to let them follow through on a dormant suicidal impulse._ That’s what the nurse had said, and not sympathetically, either. 

Fill the bucket. Fetch the sponge. Hot water, hot enough to scald, really. The cleaning spray won’t do it, where’s the bleach? Right. Regina keeps a stash from the Costco runs, there’s always a bunch of bottles in the back of the laundry room.

No sign of Snow, at least, Emma notices as she moves upstairs. There’s a night of god knows what to sleep off, after all. She makes it as far as the entrance to the old nursery, sets the bucket down, and surveys the damage.

It feels like a few seconds later, but when Ruby touches Emma’s arm, the first thing Emma notices is that there’s no steam rising from the bucket anymore. 

“Hey.” Ruby is gentle, her touch no more than a light squeeze. “Snow called me. She said you’ve just been standing here a while.”

“I have to clean--”

“No,” Ruby corrects, steering Emma out into the hallway, where Snow is hovering in her own bedroom doorway, trying not to look worried. “I’ve got it. You shouldn’t have to do this, Emma. It’s not in the job description, and you’ve been through enough for one day. Hell, for a lifetime.”

“But that’s what I do,” Emma pleads. “I stay right by her side, up or down, good or bad. When she loses it, I have to keep it together. For both of us.”

“You’ve done a great job,” Ruby insists. “But this is more than you should have to take on right now. You’ve pitched a whole game, Emma. Let a relief pitcher take this inning, okay?”

“But the mess--”

“I can handle it,” Ruby insists. “You and Snow need to go rest.”

“I don’t want anyone to know,” Emma says in a tiny voice. “I wanted to call you last night, but I can’t burden anyone else.”

“It goes no further,” Ruby promises. “I might gossip about silly things, but you know I’d never blab your private business to the town. This is your room, right?”

“Yeah,” Emma nods, exhausted. She’s still wearing the scrubs that smell like antiseptic, the plastic wrap they came in, and spilled coffee. 

“Get some rest,” Ruby says. “I’ll leave some food in the fridge to reheat, too.”

Emma protests one more time, but her eyes are closing the second her head hits the pillow.

“She tried to leave me, Rubes,” Emma mutters as sleep claims her. “Can you believe that? She was gonna leave me all alone.”

***

“Knock, knock?” Emma calls out before pushing the door the rest of the way open. “If you’re still tired, I can wait outside?”

“Come in,” Regina groans. She’ll have to get this over with eventually. 

Emma forces a smile, but it’s as weak as the paltry sunlight barely breaking through the room’s only window. Her hair is yanked up into one of those messy buns that Regina always found so tempting to play with, her fingers drawn to the loose strands as though magic forces compelled them. This morning they just make her feel sad, because they’re accompanied by dark circles under Emma’s eyes and a surprisingly formal outfit. The white shirt is Regina’s own, but the slacks are the black pair Emma is sometimes forced into for official functions. But for the garishly red leather jacket, Regina might not recognize her own wife. 

“How are you feeling?” Emma tries, and for a moment it looks like she’s going to reach out and take Regina’s hand, but the heavy bandages seem to give her pause. “The nurses said you had a good night.”

“Well, they knocked me out for eight straight hours, so I guess that’s what qualifies as good.”

“Dr. Gold said he talked to you. About your options.” Emma is apparently fascinated by the blue blanket draped over Regina’s waist. Even as tired and drawn as this, her eyes dart back and forth, mind always at work. She’s beautiful, Regina realizes all over again. Even with all they’ve been through, the sight of Emma lightens the pressure on Regina’s chest ever so slightly. 

“You mean his little movie plot? ECT is not happening, can you believe he actually suggested it?” Regina feels energized at the prospect of railing against her treatment, at having an ally, and she sits up a little taller against the pillows.

“You don’t think he’s suggesting it for a reason?” Emma is the picture of neutrality, and Regina knows that’s a warning sign, but can’t fathom why it should be. It’s the same blank look Snow gets whenever Regina apologizes to her for not being able to fulfil some basic motherly duty. She’ll have to apologize, again, for missing the damn recital.

“Maybe I’m just another journal article for him. Or he realizes this is partly his fault, for making me get rid of… well, making me do that.”

“I don’t think this case is exactly the kind of thing they need to write up,” Emma argues. “I mean, I’m not some fancy academic, but I got the impression this is all pretty run-of-the-mill. That’s why they know exactly what treatment to suggest next. It’s common, it’s what they expect.”

“Are you trying to make me angry?” Regina can’t understand Emma’s line of thinking at all, and that’s a rarity in the last eighteen or so years. “Trying to dare me into letting them torture me?”

“It’s not torture.” Emma shakes her head. “You really think I’d let them…? This? This is torture. Coming home and finding you three heartbeats from dead is torture. Trying to hide the mess from our daughter… need me to go on?”

“I’m sorry,” Regina whispers, and it shouldn’t be so hard to say. She doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t admit she’s only sorry that she failed. There’s no easy way to tell someone who loves you that the best thing you could do for them, for the family you’ve created together, is to simply remove yourself and all your trouble from the equation. 

“It’ll be dark soon,” Emma says, standing up and beginning to pace back and forth at the bottom of the bed. She notices the consent forms Gold has left, and picks up the clipboard. “Do you know what I’m going to see when I get home?”

“What?”

“One light. That big, beautiful house and there’ll be just the one light on, in the hall. No signs of life anywhere. Snow will be sulking in her room, or out with that boy. And I know, it’s not the house we dreamed of raising our family in, I know it still feels like your Mom’s house, sometimes. But with you in here, or hiding away from me to talk to our dead son… I’m just so alone, Regina.”

“No one would blame you if you left,” Regina points out, hard though it is to extend even the possibility. Just the thought leaves her clutching at the worn sheets, threadbare and bobbled under her grip. She wonders if Snow would go, too. Would Emma insist? Packing up a few bags and the violin into Emma’s car and disappearing into the night? The only child Regina’s ever raised, vanishing just like Henry. Will it hurt more, when this child leaves through her own choice instead of being taken? Regina isn’t sure anything could ever be worse, but she isn’t sure she could stand anything else even coming close; she’s not as strong as she was back then, there’s been so much damage along the way. 

“I want you to come back,” Emma says, finally looking Regina square in the eye. “And this treatment, they promise it won’t hurt. It seems like it might be our last chance to get over all this. To really move on, maybe even be happy.”

“I’ve been happy with you,” Regina insists, but when she reaches for Emma, she doesn’t come any closer. “And when I haven’t, it’s been my illness, not you. Snow knows that too, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t want to wander that empty house like a ghost anymore,” Emma pleads. “I want my wife back. I want Regina, who could run a town with one hand tied behind her back. I want you to be a mother to Snow, before it’s too late and she’s off to Yale. I want…”

“You deserve for things to be better,” Regina agrees, and once again she can close her eyes and see the life they were supposed to live, the life she had planned in such meticulous detail from the moment Emma agreed to stay in Storybrooke. The untamed drifter with tight jeans and a shock of blonde curls, who didn’t believe in family or home, suddenly finding both when Regina was the one to offer them. “I get so lost inside my own head sometimes, and the pills only ever help for a while. But the doctor said I could lose my memories.”

“Temporarily,” Emma counters. “And wouldn’t it be nice to have a break from the bad ones for a while?” She smiles, weakly. “I’m almost tempted to ask if they take volunteers.”

“You really want me to do this?”

“I want you to want it,” Emma corrects. “And if you do, and we get our fresh start… well. We’ll fill that house with light and noise, and you’ll feel safe and I’ll do everything I can to make you happy. I promise.”

“You can’t promise.”

“Watch me. I’m your savior, remember?”

“Come here,” Regina instructs, but Emma doesn’t move. “Come here, and bring the form.”

“You should take more time,” Emma says, but she’s already in motion. “I’m not trying to force you into anything, Regina.”

“I know,” Regina tells her. She reaches for the edge of Emma’s leather jacket, and pulls her close enough to kiss. What could be just a peck on the lips is something much stronger instead, and despite the hospital and the bandages and the panic, they linger long enough to make it count, to say the rest of it without words. 

“Here,” Regina says, a moment after they part. She signs where it asks for patient’s consent, and hands the clipboard back to her wife. “Your turn.”

***

“Snow!” David calls out as she almost trips down the stairs of the Rabbit Hole’s back entrance. “The bartender just called me. Says he’s five minutes from calling your mom down here in her cop car.”

“Ssh!” Snow tries to move her finger to her mouth, and misses semi-spectacularly. “I’m hiding.”

“Let’s get you home,” David suggests, climbing the few steps and wrapping her in a hug that she doesn’t resist or return. 

“Don’t wanna,” she grunts, enjoying the soft cotton of his hoodie against her cheek. “We can hang out for a while, right?”

“What are you on tonight?” David sighs. “Don’t lie and say it’s just vodka.”

“Hmm, let’s see,” Snow replies, rooting around in her purse. “Robitussin? And I had a couple of Adderall before I left, and I know there’s some Valium floating around. Or Xanax? No, wait. Both. I made a little sandwich of them. Isn’t that hilarious?”

“Damn, babe,” David tries, but she shuts that up with a glare. Pet names are not an option. “I mean, I thought I was supposed to be the bad influence?”

“Hey!” Snow argues, pulling away from him and staggering carefully down the remaining steps towards the street. “I’m under a lot of stress. My mom is getting electrocuted in the morning.”

“Oh, shit. Already? I thought they were gonna give it another couple of days?”

“She’s doing better,” Snow replies, not believing that for a second. “So, you know. Here goes nothing.”

“Will she be okay?” David calls out after her. He can’t be surprised when she doesn’t answer.

“Three times a week for at least two weeks,” Snow says when he catches up to her. “Can you imagine letting someone fuck with your brain like that?”

“Well,” David says after a minute, pointing at her purse with its pill bottles all tucked away. “No. But I guess you can.”

***

“Morning, Regina,” Gold says from somewhere behind her head. The new gown feels like sandpaper against her skin, and the nurse who brushed her hair back was more than a little rough, but Regina is trying not to dwell on the details.

“Doctor,” she replies, her voice a little raspy. She hasn’t been able to eat or drink since the previous evening in anticipation of the anesthetic. “Don’t worry, the staff psychiatrist gave me every last detail, right down to where they’re going to stick the electrodes. I’m surprised he didn’t buy me a Happy Meal to distract me with the toy.”

“They can be a bit like that here,” Gold admits, moving closer and into her limited line of sight where she lies waiting on the gurney. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be. Did you see Emma outside?”

“She’s waiting. Almost hidden the nerves, if you don’t look too closely. You have quite a woman, there.”

“Tell me about it,” Regina sighs. “This is going to work, isn’t it? Because I’m making a deal here. I’m trying this awful thing, so the tradeoff is I get better, right?”

“No guarantees, I’m afraid,” Gold doesn’t lie to her, even now, and Regina appreciates that. “But it’s absolutely your best chance. Have you said your goodbyes?”

“No,” Regina says. “I’ve been ignoring him. He’s not very happy about it, but if I don’t try now...”

“Well, hopefully in a few days, all your troubles will be over. At least relating to your boy. If you want to say farewell, no one will judge you. Anyway, I just wanted to wish you luck.”

“I don’t need luck,” Regina tells him, but the only response is the faint squeak of the door, opening and closing.

***

The monitors are beeping out of rhythm with each other, and its jarring to the musical part of Regina’s brain. She breathes in, breathes out, and concentrates until she finds a pattern and calls it syncopation.

“Regina?” The nurse says, looking over her with deft hands and cold eyes. “We’re ready now.”

Sure enough, the whine of electricity charging can be detected amidst all the background noise. Regina stares up at the gray ceiling, and blinks rapidly to chase away any lingering tears. 

“You’ll be able to feel your muscles relaxing by now,” the nurse continues, nodding at someone on the other side of the bed. “Don’t try to move, just keep breathing in and out for me.”

“I--”

“Ssh,” the nurse overrules. “Doctor?”

Someone else, the anesthesiologist presumably, speaks up then. “Can you count backwards from 100 for me, Regina?”

The whine is getting louder, and when she concentrates on their voices the monitors fall out of rhythm again. It can’t be too late to change her mind. Maybe Emma is having second thoughts, Regina clings to the thought in her panic but parts her lips to speak anyway.

“Goodbye, darling,” she whispers, and then forces her voice back to a normal volume. “100… 99…”

She blinks again, and this time the darkness stays.


	4. How Could I Ever Forget?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ECT and its aftermath... how do you rebuild what you can't remember?

“Regina?”

If she ignores the voice, perhaps it will go away.

“Regina? It’s Dr Gold.”

Her eyelids twitch, and Regina forces them open. The room swims at first, and she feels the unmistakable surge of bile at the back of her throat. Swallowing hard, she blinks a few times until the flickering light overhead becomes bearable.

“Doctor,” she replies. He’s familiar, in the way that they all are. White coats and not, they come and go, wheel her around, knock her out and gradually leave her feeling pleasantly numb, day after day. As treatments go, this isn’t the worst she’s felt. 

“Your daughter is here,” he says, nodding across the room. Regina pushes herself halfway to sitting, and sees Snow curled up on a visitor’s chair, engrossed in some book or other. Without her glasses, the cover is a blur of purple to Regina’s eyes.

“Sweetheart,” she croaks. “You know you don’t have to come in every time I get some volts.”

“Mom has to work,” Snow replies, snapping her book closed. “And at least when I’m here nobody bothers me. The nurses bring me coffee and jello, it’s like study hall with perks.”

“I’ll be back after I speak to your attending.” Gold excuses himself, and Regina knows this limited family interaction will dominate whenever her next session with him is. They’ve talked about post-treatment appointments, but she can’t seem to retain the details. Emma will have written them down somewhere.

“What are you reading?” Regina asks, once the silence has stretched way past uncomfortable. “Come a little closer, I can’t really see very well yet.”

“They didn’t say it would affect your vision,” Snow grumbles, but she drags the chair closer with an ear-rending screech of metal against the linoleum floor. As her daughter comes into focus, Regina can’t help but notice that her usually bouncy short, black hair is lank and greasy, hanging in her eyes which have dark circles outlined beneath them. Snow has always been closer to Emma in terms of personal style, but even Emma would draw the line at coffee-splashed sweatpants and a hoodie two sizes too small for going out in public. 

“What’s wrong?” Regina asks. “I’m the one being zapped, honey, but you look like hell.”

“Thanks for the confidence boost,” Snow says, stifling a yawn. “It’s been a rough week, okay?”

Regina closes her eyes, just for a moment.  
***

When she opens them, daylight has replaced the fluorescent strips and Emma is the one sitting in the chair.

“Where’s Snow?”

“I sent her home,” Emma explains. “You’re doing just great. The doctors say you’re right on track. I brought you some more pajamas from home. While I still appreciate seeing your ass, apparently you’ve been giving the rest of the floor a show overnight.”

“They should be thanking me,” Regina teases. “Are you eating okay? Snow didn’t look well when I saw her.”

“Ruby is keeping us fed and watered,” Emma says, her smile barely wavering. “And don’t worry about the kid for now, okay? She’s… going through some stuff.”

“Oh.”

Regina turns onto her side, the bandage on her temple scratching against the pillow. “I’m just going to have a nap, darling.”

***

“Snow?”

The room is dark, but there’s definitely someone huddled in the chair in the corner. Regina can’t summon her daughter’s face to mind, or when she tries she sees only Snow as a toddler, and that isn’t right, it can’t possibly be. 

“It’s okay, mom,” Snow replies, her voice slow and monotonous. “Go back to sleep.”

“You don’t sound okay,” Regina argues, trying to get out of bed. She’s restrained again. Right, the walking around at night. “Sweetheart, are you high?”

“That’s rich, coming from the Pfizer customer of the year.”

“I don’t want you doing drugs,” Regina warns. “You of all people should know what they do to a person.”

“Not here for hypocrisy, Mom. Go back to sleep, okay?”

“I’m going to talk to your mother about this,” Regina finishes, but she’s already drowsy again. She hasn’t slept this well in years, and it’s seductive to fall back under. “She won’t be happy either.”

***

“Hey,” Emma says. It’s sunny again, the warm light actually cheering up the bleakness of the hospital room for a change. Too much institutional gray and wipe-clean surfaces for comfort, but this morning it looks radiant, almost welcoming. Which, of course, is why there are packed bags sitting by the door. “The nurses put all your things together, but you want to have a last check before we go?”

“Emma?”

“Yeah, last time I checked.”

“You look different,” Regina tilts her head, taking in the changes one at a time. The long blonde curls are so much shorter now, shoulder-length and manageable. Though a newer red leather jacket remains, the clothes beneath it are much closer to Regina’s mother’s style than Emma’s own, all clean lines and coordination. It’s like watching someone play dress-up, with no explanation as to why. 

“What’s so different?” Emma says, and as she steps out of the sunbeam she’s standing in, Regina can see the lines on her face. Emma’s barely wearing makeup and her ever-present circle necklace isn’t anywhere in evidence.

“Well, your piercing is gone, for a start.”

“My… what?” Emma leans close, and her expression has that tight smile that says she’s not happy about something. Usually she gets it when Regina carelessly shows off some college-learned fact, and Emma is nothing if not prickly about her lack of formal education.

“Your eyebrow,” Regina says, eyes darting to the door before tracing the scar under Emma’s eyebrow with one trembling fingertip. “How did it heal up so quickly? I thought I’d only been here a week?”

“Two, this time. Regina… I haven’t had that piercing in… God, I think I took it out before Snow arrived. You remember what your mom used to say about it, right? Are you…”

“Am I what?”

“Why did you think I still had my piercing?”

“Because you showed up on my doorstep with it last week. And yes, my mother said it made you look even more like the crowd at the methadone clinic she drives past. Speaking of my mother, she’s not coming to pick me up, is she?”

“Uh, no. No, she won’t be. I’m just going to get the doc, okay?”

“Why? I thought you packed my things. That means I’m going.”

“Just a last minute check,” Emma assures her, but the panic is as clear as day. Regina feels a tickling at the back of her head, almost like something is trying to get her attention but one shake and the sensation is gone. 

“What’s wrong with me?” Regina pleads. “I don’t like the way you’re acting.”

“You said I got my eyebrow pierced last week,” Emma says slowly, lingering over each word with her hands firmly on her hips. “Regina, that was nineteen years ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve been in hospital for two weeks, and they did say the procedure could cause some memory loss… let me get the doctor, okay?”

Regina nods in agreement, dumbstruck by Emma’s news. Lost years or not, Regina feels fresh and relaxed, if a little weak when she moves around. She forces herself out of bed and dresses briskly, marvelling at the unfamiliar clothes that fit her like a glove. The doctor will clear up this confusion, of that much she’s sure. And then she can get back to the business of running Storybrooke, because a town should never go too long without its mayor.

***

“Hey,” Emma greets Snow as they enter through the kitchen door. “Look who I brought home. Now, listen, there’s something I need to warn you about--”

“My mother finally redecorated?” Regina gasps. “God, for years I begged her to clean up this gloomy old room with its smoke stains on the ceiling and everything in the most horrible shades of brown. I know it must have been quite modern when she moved in, but oh all this chrome and marble is exactly what I would have picked.”

“Well, you did pick it,” Snow retorts. “There was marble dust in my sandwiches for weeks.”

“And who are you?” Regina asks, running her hand over the spotless worktop.

“Regina, we talked about this in the car. This is Snow… your daughter.”

There’s no shielding their kid from the blow, and although she puts a good face on it, it isn’t hard to see how Snow crumples just a little under Regina’s unknowing glance. 

“Snow?” Regina replies after a moment. “I can’t imagine ever naming a child of mine after weather, but… if you say so.”

“This is just great,” Snow groans. “If I thought I didn’t exist before, well, now I really don’t. Great upgrade, Mom.”

“I thought,” Emma pinches her nose, fighting off the early warning signs of a killer headache. “I thought seeing the house might bring something back. Seeing us here, like we used to be.”

“I’m sure it will, in time,” Regina soothes. “If not the house, maybe my office? If I’ve really been out for two whole weeks, there must be a mountain of paperwork forming. Belle will have started making her own Mount Rushmore out of it.”

“Christ,” Snow hisses. “What the hell did they do to her?”

“Calm down,” Emma insists. “I’m going to make us all some hot chocolate, okay? Snow, why don’t you go get some of the photo albums from the study? That should help.” Her daughter, naturally, doesn’t move an inch.

“Oh, I love photo albums,” Regina sounds enthused at last, instead of that vague way she’s sounded since they left the hospital. “Mother keeps them--”

“Regina, you remember how I said the last thing you remember is about nineteen years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Well…”

“Oh. Oh, of course,” Regina looks as lost as she did the day Emma came home to find Cora dead on their living room floor. A heart attack, the paramedics declared, when Emma called them without ever asking why Regina hadn’t already. “Life goes on. Or it doesn’t, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry,” Emma says, and with the passing of years the words have become a little more sincere. As a ghost, as a memory, the grip of Cora’s iron fist has lessened. Emma blames the dead woman, perhaps more than she should, for Regina’s struggles. It’s never exactly been confirmed, but Archie has strongly implied that a happier childhood might have given Regina better coping mechanisms. But his advice has changed with the seasons, blaming everything from brain chemistry to the vegetables in their diet, so Emma’s no longer sure what to trust. “It was very peaceful. We can talk about that later.”

“And speaking of people who aren’t here--” Snow begins, a glint of malice in her eyes where the tears threatened to spill a few moments ago.

“Let’s start with the happy,” Emma interrupts. “Regina, the photo albums are right where they’ve always been, why don’t you go get them in the den and we’ll bring through some cocoa.”

Regina nods, glancing between them before she leaves. Unfortunately for Emma, Regina has always had a keener than average sense for when she’s being lied to, but for now the danger is averted.

“Happy?” Snow snorts. “I hope you’re good at Photoshop, because I don’t recall a lot of smiles in the Addams Family archives. Do you even need me here for this?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s with cutting me off about Hen--”

“No. No, okay? If she can’t remember that right now? It’s a blessing. And we get to rearrange the life we could have had, if that hadn’t ruined everything. I’d think you of all people would understand that.”

“It’s dishonest,” Snow accuses, arms folded over her chest before dropping over her stomach until she’s essentially hugging herself. Emma wants to crumble at the sight of a daughter obviously so dependent on self-soothing, but right now she has to hold it all together long enough to reset things once and for all. “Aren’t you always telling me how important the truth is?”

“We’ve been lying for a long time, kid,” Emma reminds her. “This has to be better than all the times we pretended we could see the crazy shit, too. Just hang in there for a little while, I promise you: this is when it finally gets better.”

“When are you going to learn to stop making that promise?” Snow sighs. “Come on, get the milk out, or we’ll never have this damn drink.”

***

“So is this chubby little girl--”

“Still me,” Snow groans, from where she’s leaning against the sofa. They’re camped out on the floor, individual photographs littering the carpet, half-emptied albums stacked up on the cushions they could otherwise be sitting on. “Can we get past my awkward phase, please?”

“We could, if it hadn’t lasted about fifteen years,” Emma teases, ducking at the throw pillow that comes flying her way. “I’m just joking! You were always a lovely kid.”

“You’re very fair,” Regina muses, flipping through more. “There’s nothing of my coloring in you at all. But of course...you’re adopted. Did we ever contact the birth parents?”

“Closed adoption, all the way,” Emma explains. “It’s been for the best, I think. No point dragging the past into things, you always said.”

“How wise of me,” Regina murmurs, swapping out the photos for another little stack she’s made. “Some of these feel familiar. This house, with the red door…”

“That was our first place, out in the woods,” Emma is instantly on edge. “We didn’t live there long, moved in here once your mother’s estate was settled.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember our wedding,” Regina is tearful then. “Would you tell me about it?”

“It was perfect,” Emma smiles, and it isn’t rewriting history, not really. “You looked so gorgeous. On the way to the ceremony, you stopped at this garden, I don’t remember where, and you picked these two flowers. You put one in your hair, and pinned the other one to my dress.”

“It sounds like everything we could have hoped for,” Regina’s smile is uncertain, and Emma reaches out to take her hand.

“Uh, it was raining,” Snow butts in. “And you had to run off to Portland so Grandma wouldn’t put a stop to it.”

“It was still perfect,” Emma insists. “What’s a little drizzle on your wedding day, huh?”

“Ironic, if you listen to Alanis,” Snow snarks. “Is none of this sparking a memory? You don’t remember me learning to walk? Or losing my first tooth?”

“Honestly?” Regina replies. “I feel like it’s right there, like it’s just in the next room and I need to figure out how to get in there. I am trying, dear.”

“Screw this,” Snow announces, getting up and going over to the drawers of the dresser. From there she pulls what looks like a school notebook, bringing it back and dropping it in Regina’s lap. “Maybe we can’t cover the whole truth today, but we can cover some of it.”

“What’s this?” Regina asks, opening the book with genuine curiosity. “Local woman scares shoppers…”

“That’s the time you got convinced all the food at the market had been poisoned by government spies,” Snow explains, all fake-helpfulness. “Turn over, you’ll see the pictures of when you barricaded yourself in the old house, wouldn’t come out for three days.”

“Snow, I’m warning you--”

“This is a picture of last year’s recital--you missed that one, too, by the way.” Snow is pointing at the page with stabbing motions of one finger, the rage palpable.

“I remember!” Regina announces. “That was when they tried the higher dose of lithium, right? I couldn’t get out of the car.”

“Right,” Emma says, awestruck at the sudden clarity.

“And the year before that, look,” Regina is reading another article, this one culled from the student newsletter. “This is when I jumped in the pool.”

“At my swim meet.”

“I thought you were drowning,” Regina remembers sheepishly. “Sweetheart… you’ve had a very strange life. I’m so sorry.”

“Well, at least you get it now,” Snow concedes, blushing furiously, and if her shoulders slump just a little, Emma can only hope it’s some kind of relief. A daughter at peace after all this time would be a blessing. 

“I think that’s enough for one day,” Emma tells them, getting up gingerly as she shakes out the cramp around her knees. “Maybe we should think about getting some food together. And then you can get settled back in?”

“I’d like to take a shower,” Regina says. “I haven’t had one in private for a while.”

“I think we can manage that,” Emma says. “I’ll go get you some clean towels.” What she doesn’t add is that she’ll be sweeping their bathroom for razors, nail files and anything else even close to sharp, but some things, for now, don’t need to be shared out loud.

***

“You’re saying this is normal?” Emma demands, standing halfway to the door of Gold’s office. “It’s not getting any better. It’s like one flash of remembering, and we have to fill in the blanks on everything else. It’s kinda exhausting, honestly.” Regina isn’t sure if she’s expected to follow, but she edges forward in her seat just in case.

“Well, let’s ask Regina, shall we?” There’s an insincere patience in Gold’s voice, unhappy at being challenged. “Tell me, have things felt clearer since the treatment?”

“I… yes,” Regina admits, closing her eyes. Emma will see it as a betrayal, she can already tell.

“And things are less… frightening?”

“Yes.”

“Do you still feel like these things are happening to someone else? That your life is barely your own?”

“Well, no.”

“Really?” Emma is incredulous, hands on her hips. “It’s that big an improvement?”

Regina nods, clasping her trembling hands together and clamping them between her thighs. She’s dressed formally today, like this regular appointment could be considered some sort of interview or examination. Her navy pinstriped suit still fits perfectly, and the accessories were chosen with painstaking care. Even Emma doesn’t know how early Regina started her preparations, up before dawn just like when Mother had still been alive.

“So,” Gold preens, steepling his fingers in front of his face like he knows all the world’s mysteries. “A little loss of memory is normal, Emma. This much is rare, admittedly, but the memories are still in there, waiting to be unearthed. You’ve already seen some, so like I said: perfectly normal.”

“I don’t give a damn about normal,” Emma sighs. “We haven’t seen a normal day in over a decade. I just want to know we’ve done the right thing.”

“I would say so,” Gold answers. “Just give it some more time. Keep doing what you’ve been doing with family stories and looking at photos. It should come. Now, Regina… shall we get on with the rest of your appointment? I’m sure Belle would be happy to fetch a coffee if your wife rejoins her in the waiting room.”

Emma takes her cue, offering an awkward half-wave to Regina as she departs the office. They haven’t quite found a rhythm yet, when it comes to casual affection. Regina can see the intent in Emma’s every gesture, how often she moves automatically to touch, to soothe, to guide… but those unexpected gestures cause Regina to freeze, to lose her words and thoughts for a long moment each time. The missing intimacy is like a mist hovering over them, and although Regina can’t remember the existence of that simple closeness, its absence is putting them both on edge.

“What should we talk about?” Regina asks. “I can hardly remember half of what’s wrong with me, after all.”

“We can talk about whatever you’d like,” Gold insists. “Don’t feel you have to adjust or pretend to remember for my benefit. Is that how it’s felt at home?”

Betrayal, Regina thinks once more. Selling out the happy lie Emma wants so desperately to present to the outside world, but therapy is worthless without honesty; Regina read that on a pamphlet in the waiting room just fifteen minutes ago.

“It’s strange,” she begins. “I suppose we should start with my daughter.”

***

“Hey,” David says, and Emma almost responds until she sees Snow on the porch, clearly the person he’s talking to. 

“Not now, Nolan,” Snow groans. “I’ve been up all night and I still haven’t touched my calculus.”

Emma ducks out of sight behind the car, already feeling the first twinge of guilt about spying, but she hasn’t exactly had the free time to keep track of their daughter the past little while. It’s just checking in, of a sorts.

“Your mom’s home, huh?”

“Yeah, she’s off at the doctor again today, then I think she was going for some spa treatment. My other mom thinks it might chill her out.”

“That’s pretty sweet,” David replies, shuffling one dirty workboot across their front path, before digging it into the loose earth of the nearest flowerbed. “So don’t get mad, but I got us tickets for a thing.”

“A concert?”

“A dance. It’s the Spring Fling. Total cheese, I know. But it’s our last year, so I thought…”

“What?” Snow snaps. “That I’d wear a pretty dress and you’d sweep me off my feet? We’ll dance all formal, like it’s a Ren Fayre or some freaking thing? I don’t do dances. You know that.”

“Well do this one dance. With me?”

“You should go. At least one of my moms will be home any minute.”

“I can--”

“Just go, David.”

Emma takes her cue, skirting around the car like she’s approaching from the street. 

“Hey, kids.”

“David was just leaving,” Snow announces. “I have homework. Call me, you know, if there’s actually going to be dinner.”

David slopes off down the path without further acknowledgment; neither Snow nor Emma turns to watch him go. They stand on the porch together instead, heads hanging in something between exhaustion and disappointment.

“Mom went to the spa?”

“Kathryn’s going to bring her home later, yeah. You didn’t go to school?”

“My own mom doesn’t remember me. I figured I could skip a day of fart jokes and prom planning. I got more work done here, anyway.”

“Don’t make a habit--”

“Enough, okay? It’s under control. I’ll be in my room.”

Emma sighs, watching her daughter traipse into the house like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, and in too many ways, it is. It will be easier now, with Regina home. At least, when she starts to really remember. It’s not wrong to enjoy this little vacation without mention of Henry, without wondering if every distracted look means there’s a hallucination in the corner. Emma shakes her head, following inside and heading straight for the kitchen. She’ll rustle up some pizza--even she can’t screw that up--and tonight they’ll try again.

***

She calls Gold a few days later, watching Regina keep herself busy in the garden.

“You know I can’t discuss the specifics--”

“Should I tell her about him? It’s been two weeks and nothing.”

“You should,” Gold tells her. “Do it carefully, try not to upset her too much all at once. But she needs the complete set of memories to put her life back together.”

“She’s doing better,” Emma says, for her own benefit more than anything. “She’s tending to the roses and it’s like… it’s like before. When things were better.”

“That’s as may be,” Gold sighs. “But the therapeutic guidelines are clear.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“Think nothing of it.”

Yeah, Emma sighs. It’s always nothing until the next bill arrives. 

***

Regina winces at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Her absence has been noted, then. Usually Emma sleeps through the night, and Regina’s been able to continue her project undisturbed. Tonight, the luck is finally running out.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Emma asks from the doorway of the den, hair tousled from sleep and her overstretched Red Sox t-shirt hanging off one shoulder. “You should wake me. I’ll keep you company.”

“It’s fine,” Regina insists, forcing a smile. “I’m just… doing my homework, I guess.” She gestures to the photos spread out on the table, and the journal she’s been filling with anecdotes and reminders.

“You can’t take the memories out of the dork,” Emma teases gently. “But that dork still shows up when she’s looking for her memories.”

“There’s nothing dorky about being organized,” Regina huffs. Emma enters the room at last, moving behind Regina and sliding her palms down over shoulders and chest until they’re wrapped up in a lazy hug, Emma bent over Regina’s chair. “And they took plenty of my memories out, didn’t they?”

“They’re coming back. You’re missing your mom?” Emma asks, her voice warm against Regina’s ear. “I guess it feels like losing her all over again.”

“It does, and it doesn’t. Part of me still feels a little shocked, but it’s like there’s some background program running, and it knows I already dealt with this. Sort of like the twinge in my knee when the weather gets cold, it isn’t injured anymore, but it’s like the muscles remember even without me.”

“You haven’t ridden a horse since you hurt your knee,” Emma adds, and it’s definitely wistful. “You know, if you come back to bed…”

“I won’t sleep anyway,” Regina adds, patting Emma’s hand and not thinking about the gesture until afterwards. It is coming back, she thinks. Her body remembers Emma and the closeness of her wife seems to activate it. She sighs, a stuttering breath that catches behind her teeth, and offers a silent thanks for the progress. “It just feels like I’m missing something.”

“Just the details,” Emma insists. “It probably feels like more than it is.”

“Our wedding is mostly coming back. The albums have helped with Snow. But there’s something tugging at me, like an errand I forgot to run.”

“I think that’s just part of getting older. We’re not twenty-three anymore, Regina. Hell, I spend half my working day wondering where my keys are, and that’s even when I can hear them jangling in my pocket.”

“You go back up,” Regina insists. “I won’t be much longer.”

“Don’t push too hard, okay?” It’s hard to hear it as anything but a warning. “The memories will come back if they’re supposed to.”

“Mmhmm.”

Regina picks up the photographs as Emma retreats, arranging them in neat rows once more. There are even more on the computer, but Regina can’t remember her password and that’s another thing Emma doesn’t want to rush. It’s likely that Snow knows, given that she frequently disappears into the study for hours at a time, but Regina is reluctant to ask. It’s only then she frowns, wondering if Emma’s use of ‘if’ instead of ‘when’ is intentional or not.

Eventually she stands and stretches, clicking off the lamp she’s been working by. As she moves towards the door, there’s a thump from the porch that startles her. Too curious to be scared, Regina moves towards the front door and eases it open.

“Oh, hi, Mrs… Regina,” David blurts, rubbing his ass as he stands up. “I was just dropping off some homework for Snow.”

“And you couldn’t use the door like a civilized person?”

“She wasn’t answering her phone. I didn’t want to disturb anyone else. So I guess I thought playing Spiderman would be cooler. Is… everything okay? I totally get it if you’re mad, but you look a little…”

“David,” Regina says, the word unfamiliar on her lips. “You’re David.”

“Right,” David nods enthusiastically. “Hey, if you remember me first time, that’s a good sign, right? Snow said you had some memory issues.”

“You remind me of someone,” Regina continues, ignoring his chatter. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” David replies, standing up straight. “Why?”

“I have no idea,” Regina sighs. “Snow is in her room. Come in, but be quiet going upstairs, or the Sheriff will chase you out.”

“Thanks,” David says, pushing past her eagerly. He’s halfway up the stairs when Regina feels the prickling at the base of her skull, an insistent little itch that tells her to turn around. But when she looks out, back at the porch, there’s nothing to see but shadows.

***

“It’s been four weeks,” Regina barks, tapping her foot impatiently as Gold watches her. After a moment, she resumes pacing, far too agitated to sit. “And my mind makes my teenage daughter’s bedroom look tidy by comparison. How do I know what I’ve forgotten if I’ve forgotten it? What I still need to remember is beyond me, it keeps just happening in flashes. I thought this treatment would give me control.”

“If you’re feeling anxious, perhaps I can prescribe--”

“Put that pad away, you quack,” Regina mocks, her smile cruel although she isn’t aiming to hurt, not today. “And give me some answers, for once.”

“Temper, dearie,” Gold shoots back, but he’s grinning at the display of strength, damn him. “Are you talking to your wife about all this? What does she say about it?”

“She doesn’t say much of anything. Although I do seem to remember that she’s never been one for talking about problems. Emma was always hit and run on emotional matters.”

“And yet she’s been with you every step of the way,” Gold admonishes, leaning forward. “Plenty wouldn’t have stayed even half as long. Do you discuss your depression with her?”

“Of course.”

“The delusions?”

“As far as I know, I’m not having any lately. But we’ve been through the greatest hits of my crazy behavior, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And has it helped to talk about your son?”

Regina’s body stops so suddenly that she almost falls flat on her face, one pointed heel catching in the swirls of the shag carpeting. 

“My… what?”

“Ah. I thought your wife had… we discussed… no matter. Clearly, you two need to talk more.”

“More? Doctor, I barely remember marrying this woman, beyond being in Portland, in some gray building.”

“It’s for the best. I can’t fill in memories that I didn’t share with you, Regina. Go to Emma. Talk to her.”

Regina takes her seat at last, with barely ten minutes of the appointment left. Her head is throbbing with the sudden burst of new information, and she can’t pick a single piece of the puzzle to latch on to. She drops her head forward, pressing her palms against her forehead in a bid to find some calm. 

She feels the prickle at the back of her neck, and swallows hard.

***

“Regina?” Emma calls out, although she’s already following the sound of music coming from the dining room. The tune is familiar, but after a day spent chasing punk-ass kids she’s too tired to concentrate. 

There’s no reply, so Emma walks in to find the chairs pushed back from the table, photos and tchotkes scattered all over the large table, spilling onto the floor in a bunch of places. Regina has her back turned, so it isn’t clear right away what she’s holding. It’s only when Emma gets close enough to look over Regina’s shoulder that she sees it: that goddamned music box. 

“Still doing homework?” Emma asks, trying to keep it light. “You always were a total teacher’s pet, huh?”

She reaches casually for the box, but the minute she tries to take it from her wife, Regina clutches it like she’s just caught a Hail Mary pass in the dying seconds of the Superbowl. She looks up at Emma from where Regina has knelt among the souvenirs of their life together, eyes red-rimmed and stormy, darker than Emma can ever remember seeing them. It’s almost chilling in its intensity, but Emma doesn’t let go of the music box.

“It’s just a dumb old music box,” Emma insists, giving another tug. It’s ridiculous to be squabbling like toddlers over a toy. “Let me put it back and we’ll go through the photos some more.”

“We used to play it for the baby,” Regina says, looking back down at the item in her hands. Her voice is hoarse again, like she’s been crying for a really long time. Emma’s heart starts to sink towards her boots. “It was the only thing… it soothed him. When he couldn’t sleep. We had a son.”

It’s pure accusation, and without a good excuse, Emma simply pulls at the box again. Regina pulls away this time, scrambling on her knees until she can leverage herself up with one of the dining room chairs. She opens the box once more, closing her eyes and humming along with the plinking noises. 

“We had only been living here a few months,” Regina whispers, rounding the chair and sitting on it, legs crossed at the ankles like the proper lady she’d been raised to be. “And I had that coat, do you remember? The black one with the high collar. I just pulled it on over my pajamas. Blue, weren’t they?”

“Regina, this isn’t going to help…”

“Shut up!” Regina snaps. “Shut your mouth, and let me finish remembering. You drove so fast, I thought the Bug was going to tip over. How we didn’t crash, I’ll never know.”

“Please,” Emma sinks to her knees in front of Regina, their voices both harsh as the music starts to slow down, the handle needing to be wound again. “I’m begging you, Regina. I don’t want to talk about this now. Anything but this.”

“How could I forget?” Regina pleads, and when she lets the box fall to the floor, the lid snaps off cleanly. 

“If we’re going to talk about it, I need a drink. ” Emma stalls, wanting just one more minute of the tentative peace they’ve been enjoying. “You want one?”

Regina shakes her head. 

“Meet me in the bedroom,” Emma tells her. “I don’t want Snow overhearing all of this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the... two month wait, dammit. Life, work, the universe all conspired to leave a complete void of inspiration. The wheels are very much back on the wagon though, so look out for the rest of this and then We Need To Talk About Henry.


	5. Most Happy Endings Are Dumb Anyway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so our tale draws to a conclusion. We find out the specifics of what happened to Henry, and the family works out what this all means for their future. 
> 
> There IS an epilogue, which has been written since I started this piece. But I want you to experience this ending first, as this is where the source material leaves us on the journey.

“It was raining,” Regina continues as Emma walks into their bedroom with a glass of Scotch half-filled. Regina almost regrets turning down a drink, but she has to get through this while her head still feels clear. “It was the middle of the night, well, early morning really. And he was chilled, so cold to the touch. Just lying there…”

“I remember all this,” Emma tells her. “You don’t have to relive it for my benefit.”

“You’d be happier if I never remembered, wouldn’t you?” Regina is sitting cross-legged on the middle of the bed, and Emma considers her carefully before taking a seat up by the pillows. She's half-turned towards the conversation, but looking ready to bolt at any second. “You tried to keep it from me. Gold said that you were supposed to have told me by now.”

“I didn’t know how!” Emma yells. “Jesus, how exactly do I drop that nuclear bomb into conversation?”

“You owed me the truth,” Regina spits, and it’s all she can do not to reach out and shake Emma. “We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other. God. I’ve been so dependent on you, so goddamn vulnerable.”

“I was trying to protect you,” Emma insists. “Don’t you get that? If I could spare you that… maybe you don’t remember yet how bad it was for you, but I do. I lived through every day of it.”

“Ten months,” Regina sighs. She sees the good intentions radiating from Emma: it's the desire to protect that’s kept the Sheriff’s badge in her hands all these years. “He was ten months old, Emma.”

“I know.”

“If I close my eyes, I can feel how cold he was. Even when we got to the hospital, that horrible yellow room, the walls were the color of vomit. I can see it now. I can see it.”

“Regina--”

“I don’t know how I could forget. We screamed at Whale, didn’t we? I think Dr Hopper came to calm us down, but I couldn’t stop crying.”

“I punched the wall,” Emma sighs. “Broke a bunch of little bones. Still gets sore when it rains.”

“Do you ever forget? It feels like it just happened to me. I think I remember feeling that a lot, before. Like time wasn’t passing.”

“It still hurts, if that’s what you’re asking,” Emma replies. She turns around and reaches for Regina’s hand. It’s cruel, wicked perhaps, but Regina withholds it. She doesn’t enjoy the way Emma’s face crumples, but it does feel like something close to justice. “But what hurt most of all was seeing you in pain and not being able to help you.”

“You’ve gotten sweeter with age,” Regina says, considering Emma’s hand as it sits so close to her own, fingers twitching, because of course Emma will try again. Simple wedding bands match on their left hands, the comforter beneath them a rich shade of blue. “The Emma I remember would never have said that.”

“Well, that Emma would have felt it, when it comes to you,” Emma admits, wrinkling her nose at expressing her emotions. Sure enough, her hand crosses the small space again, only for Regina’s to remain out of reach. “It’s just over the years I’ve learned how to show you, instead of just standing around like an idiot.”

“I haven’t called you an idiot in a while.”

“I was kinda enjoying that part.”

“The one thing I don’t remember is how. I mean, I remember Whale coming in to tell us, right there in the waiting room where anyone could hear. He just said, ‘I’m so sorry. Your son is--”

“I know. I know. Don’t say it, Regina. Don’t.”

“We were practically still children ourselves, raising a child. What was I thinking?”

“We couldn’t have known, we did everything right at the time.” Emma explains, and Regina isn’t sure who she’s trying to convince. “Allergies, they said. The clinic, the specialist, even rushing him to the ER what? Three, four times before that? And they just kept saying ‘babies cry’. Like that explained a damn thing. They wrote us off as hysterical mothers, overreacting to a few bad nights.”

“We slept in the nursery with him.” Closing her eyes, Regina can smell the talcum powder and baby shampoo. If she reaches out, she’s almost sure she could grasp the bars of his crib. “And just when he had cried himself into a few minutes of sleep, he would reach out and grasp my finger.”

“He did,” Emma corrects. “I had to work, my back couldn’t take the cushions on the floor. But I think it’s good that he knew you were there. You were always there, Regina.” There’s guilt all over her face, and Regina knows she should hate causing that, but this is too important.

“He cried and he cried, and then that morning he stopped. He just stopped and oh--” Regina can’t stop it, the fresh wave of tears that feels like she’s choking. It’s as though the emotion has become a physical thing, a weight in her chest that she’s trying to cough up. Burning tears stream down her face and her nose blocks in an instant. Emma’s weeping silently next to her, her hand still marooned and grasping at the bedcovers.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” Emma whispers. She wriggles her whole body closer, pulling Regina into a tight hug. It would be easy to push her away, to deny her this comfort, but Regina finds she needs it every bit as much. She can’t do without the warmth of Emma’s arms around her any longer. She murmurs an almost silent ‘sorry’ against Emma’s shoulder, that Emma doesn’t hear or doesn’t acknowledge. “I don’t understand why you want to dwell on the things that hurt you.”

“I have to remember. He’s my son, and I have to remember him. That’s what a mother does.”

“Right,” Emma sighs, her breath warm against Regina’s shoulder. “And we honor him, I swear to God we do, in every way we can.”

“Do we?” Regina demands, wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt, beyond caring what it will do to the material. “Or is he just the ghost in this house that we never talk about?”

“He’s not a ghost. You just found it really hard to let go of him. But we have to live for Snow now, too. Give her all the love we had for Henry and add it to the love we already have for her. It’s… it’s not too late to have a relationship with your daughter, Regina.”

It’s so condescending that Regina feels herself pulling away. Her fingers are tingling in anticipation of a good, hard slap. That’s unlike her, even in her wildest rages and manic episodes she’s been reluctant to hurt Emma. Regina always promised herself never to lay a hand on her wife in anything other than love and lust. 

“Why don’t you ever say his name?” Regina presses on, knowing she has to finish this story before Emma closes down on the subject for good. “Henry. It’s always ‘him’. Why is that?”

“It’s not on purpose.”

“Sure about that? It’s just… you know what? He was a baby when he died. I understand that. But I remember him much older.”

“Shit.” Emma’s shoulders slump enough for Regina to notice. “I was worried you'd say that.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“I think we need to call Dr. Gold.”

“Emma, no--”

“I have to,” Emma tells her, brushing a loose strand of hair behind Regina’s ear for her. “It’s going to be fine, I promise. We’ve caught it just in time.”

“Please, please don’t call him. I’m better, remember? I just need to work out why David reminded me of Henry, before. Just answer that one question, right?”

“I can’t do that.” Emma is pulling away, and though Regina reaches for her, her reaction is too late. She claws at the air for a futile second, watching her wife walk away.

As Emma’s voice seeps in from the hall, little more than a murmur, Regina grabs the nearest pillow and presses the cotton against her stinging face, soaking the material in an instant. Her mouth opens without permission, without any kind of instruction, and the first scream makes her feel like her throat is tearing. She should pull back, check she isn’t choking up her own blood onto the pillow, because that’s how much it hurts. 

She doesn’t hear if Emma comes back before the world fades to black. 

***

“Mom?” 

Regina bolts awake at the whisper, alert despite her exhaustion. The last thing she has the energy for is Mom duty, but Emma is issuing grumbling little snores beside her. Regina slips out from under the covers, frowning that she’s still in her day clothes. She blinks, adjusting to the darkness and smooths her rumpled shirt as she crosses the bedroom.

“Mom?” More urgent now, and Regina steels herself to cope, to put on the face of confidence and capability that every mom requires.

“I’m awake, sweetheart,” she whispers back. “Out in the hall, okay? We shouldn’t wake your mom.”

“Okay.”

“Right,” Regina says, reaching for the lamp, clicking it on and squinting in the light. She sinks onto the silk-covered love-seat, a horrible relic of her mother's, built for decoration, not comfort. “What’s wrong?” She feels the prickling at the back of her neck again. She’s known this was coming as soon as the memories began to return.

“They thought they’d got rid of me this time, huh?” Henry sounds like he’s joking, but there’s no hint of a grin on his sullen face. He leans against the wall opposite, his gray t-shirt blending with the muted tones of the wallpaper. He’s tall and gangly and not even a little transparent, which Regina knows is not a good sign. “Miss me?”

“You know I did,” Regina answers, blinking away tears again, surprised there’s any moisture left in her body to expel. She’s thirsty and her head is thumping. She draws her knees up to her chest, hugging herself as best she can on the uncomfortable furniture. “But I shouldn’t be talking to you, Henry.”

She risks a darting look in each direction, but her own bedroom door and Snow’s remain undisturbed. Regina’s safe, for now. She can have this one last indulgence.

“Where did you go?” She asks.

“Away,” Henry groans, drumming his fingers against the wall in rapid time. “It’s not much fun getting deleted. Though I can’t say your electric chair experience looked like much fun, either.”

“How are you back?” Regina asks, but she’s still lucid enough to know that he can’t answer. If she doesn’t know, Henry can’t know. “You were gone, I forgot almost everything.”

“Maybe I’m not just a memory,” Henry suggests. “Maybe I’m part of you now. In your soul, or whatever. Or maybe I’m just an echo, and I’m just going to fade out again.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Regina confesses, her voice hoarser than ever. “Maybe if we’re careful, if we only talk to each other and you stay away when I’m with the others--”

“I don’t want to be a secret, Mom.”

“They have to believe I’m back to normal,” Regina pleads. “I can’t take much more of this. I don’t have the strength for another ‘cure’.”

“You could always come with--”

“No. Not again. Don’t ask that of me.”

“Always an option,” Henry says, and he finally smiles. It’s like a beam of light aimed straight into Regina’s heart, and she feels her spirits lift at the sight of it. Her boy. Her Henry. 

There’s a sound of stirring from the bedroom Regina just left, and she looks towards it in panic. Henry tuts, rolls his eyes and then he’s nowhere to be seen. Regina looks around for him for as long as she dares. She’s looking straight ahead again by the time Emma pads out into the hallway, sleep-rumpled and grumpy.

“You okay? I woke up and you were gone. I thought--”

“I was just debating whether to make some hot milk,” Regina lies. “I’m thirsty, but water’s just so boring, you know?”

“I do know,” Emma agrees. “Go back to bed, maybe grab some actual pajamas on the way, hmm? I’ll bring up some milk. That sounds pretty good right now. You want nutmeg?”

“Do I like it in my milk?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“Then yes. Nutmeg.”

“Regina?”

“Yes?”

“Everything okay? We’ll see Dr. Gold tomorrow, I left a message with his service.”

“Later today now, you mean,” Regina smiles like the appointment is something to look forward to, instead of another trial to endure. It’s worth it, for the lopsided Emma gives her before heading downstairs, a vision in a creased vest and boxer shorts. “See you in bed,” Regina calls softly after her. 

***

“Snow isn’t back from rehearsal,” Emma barks as she opens the front door to find David Nolan loitering on the porch. He looks worried, his usually fluffy hair plastered down by the falling rain. Water runs off his wax jacket, two sizes too big and no doubt meant for farm work, just like the mud-stained boots on his feet. 

“Did she say anything about the dance? I wanted to know if I should bother getting ready or...”

“Your guess is as good as mine” Emma says, barely keeping the frustration from her voice as she leans back in through the open door and yells for her wife. “Regina! We’re gonna be late if you don’t get your ass down here right now!”

“Running late, huh?” David asks. Emma responds with a glare.

“Like I said, if she gets her ass down here…”

“Well, it’s a pretty great… uh, I can’t believe I just said… you know what? I should go to school.”

“I think that’s wise, Nolan. Before I feel the need to remind you that as Sheriff, I’m armed.” Emma pats her hip in warning, even though her firearm is stashed in the glove compartment already.

“I’m here,” Regina announces, stepping out into the late afternoon dressed to the nines. Her skirt suit is a charcoal gray, all the better to offset the perfect hint of smoky eye makeup. It's all crowned with a slash of plum lipstick that highlights everything beautiful about her face. Emma’s stunned for a moment, then glad that David hit the bricks before he could take in this sight. “We’re plenty early, dear. There’s no need to fuss.”

“All set?” Emma asks, tugging at her leather jacket and wishing she’d picked a nicer sweater to wear under it. Over the years, Regina’s made improvements to Emma’s wardrobe, and Emma's good at stealing items that look good on her. Left to her own devices, though, the old habits of cheap and cosy comfort sneak back in. “I don’t have to be in work tonight, so maybe we can grab dinner after.”

“Sure,” Regina says, opening the passenger door and sliding into her seat without meeting Emma’s eyes. “Let’s just go, shall we?”

“Right,” Emma says, fumbling with the keys before getting into the driver’s seat. “No time like the present.”

***

“Why do you stay with me?” Regina asks as they turn onto the highway. The radio is especially crackly with the weather, so she snaps it off in frustration. There’s just the sweep and squeak of the wipers on wet glass, the drumming of rain, and the sound of them both breathing, to compete with the low roar of the engine. “I’m really asking,” she adds, off Emma’s quizzical sideways glance.

“Because… I do,” Emma huffs, eyes narrowing as she’s overtaken by an asshole in a Porsche. “I wasn’t kidding around when I said my vows, you know.”

“It’s just so strange to me,” Regina admits. “Things are coming back, but I remember you young, and you were sort of flighty? I didn’t think I’d get a second date at one point. Don’t you see how this is weird?”

“Trust me, this is not the weirdest shit we’ve dealt with. Some memory loss and, you know, the Henry stuff… that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But I’m in it for the long haul. Somewhere in there, you taught me to stop running.”

“Why did we… well, there’s no way this doesn’t sound awful, but hear me out. Why did we go ahead with Snow’s adoption, considering everything that happened? I keep telling myself that we must have thought a new baby would soothe the loss. But it doesn’t feel like my kind of decision, however I look at it.”

“You took some persuading,” Emma admits. When Regina looks at the steering wheel, Emma’s casual grip has become a white-knuckled one. “I mean, we both wanted it. And things were so far down the line already…”

“But there was always the option. She’s a bright girl, and she can be quite lovely, of course I see that. I’m surprised nobody tried to stop us, either.”

“Take a baby away from the grieving mothers? That wouldn’t make anyone look good. And Snow? Well, she’s been ours from the moment we saw her. It just clicked. I promise, you’ll get that feeling back.”

“What if I don’t?”

“You will.”

“Emma, this pig-headed insistence is--”

“What? I can’t have five minutes of optimism? I can’t try to will things to get better? Hey, it hasn’t so far, but the hell am I going to stop trying.”

“This is what I’m saying,” Regina is exasperated now, her words have a bite to them that she doesn’t quite intend. “It sounds like it’s been hell for god knows how long. Why aren’t you running for the hills?”

“Because I love you.”

“Is that enough?”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry. But is it?”

The traffic around them is slowing into the trickle of rush hour, cars edging forward by inches. Emma drums her fingers on the wheel, her breath coming hard and fast as she feigns interest in the cars around her. It's the false hyper vigilance of someone trying to avoid eye contact.

“I want it to be,” Emma whispers, and Regina wouldn’t catch it if she weren’t watching so closely. “God, Regina. You were this amazing, gorgeous, powerful woman, even in your early twenties. Falling for you was like being hit by an asteroid, I swear to God. And okay, so it’s been tough--”

“An understatement.”

“Tough,” Emma insists. “But I made a promise, back when everything was easier and you were happier. I know that Regina is still in there. I know you can be happy again, no matter how much damage has come in between. And don’t ask me how I know, because I suck at this stuff. But when you get that back, I want to be right here waiting for you.”

“To have the life we should have had,” Regina summarizes. “To make all this worth it.”

“It’s already worth it,” Emma corrects, risking a glance at her wife. “You’ve always been worth it, don’t you get that?”

“And if Gold tells me today that I’m backsliding? That this cure won’t hold and nothing else will?”

“Then we deal. Don’t look at me like that, all eye rolling and whatever. We’ve done it before, so we’ll do it again.”

“Face it, Mom,” Henry adds from the backseat, making Regina’s breath catch in her throat. “You two are stuck with each other.”

***

“You have to go,” Regina tells him through gritted teeth, washing her hands in the spotless sink. She can’t hide out in this bathroom much longer, the official start of her appointment is looming in just a minute or two. Henry lingers in the reflection, kicking out at a bin full of discarded paper towels. “Please. I don’t want to go through all this again.”

“Who says I’m the problem?” Henry demands. “Maybe all this time they’ve been trying to fix the wrong things.”

“And that’s just my own imagination talking,” Regina argues back. She glances at the door to make sure Emma hasn’t followed her in. “You’ll always be with me, darling. No matter how many times they wipe my memory, I carry you around in my…”

“What? Your heart?” Henry scoffs. “Spare me the soap opera dialogue, Mom. The only thing in your heart is residue from all the pills in your bloodstream. You know at least three of them have heart attacks as a possible side effect.”

“I have to go into my appointment now. Don’t talk to me in front of Gold, okay?”

“Why not? Maybe if he got the real picture--”

“You’re not real, Henry!” Regina’s voice bounces back at her from the white tiles, which are institutional to a fault despite the chic coziness of the rest of Gold’s clinic. “Now, I am going to fix my hair, and when I leave this room, you’re not coming with me. Understood?”

“We’ll see,” Henry teases, but for once he hangs back instead of forcing his way into her personal space. Regina frets for a moment that this time she’s upset him, before shaking her head to clear it. She can feel the strands of reality slipping through her hands like silk rope, and she flexes her fingers a few times, forming desperate fists as though that will keep the darkness at bay just a little while longer. “So go, then. Leave me behind all over again.”

She isn’t crying as she steps back out into the hall, but it’s a little too close for comfort.

***

“So what do you recommend, doctor?” Regina has her head in her hands as she finishes recounting the details of Henry’s return. The various feelings that have been swirling in her head and in the part of her stomach that makes her queasy are hard to explain. “Tell me this is a common step on the road to recovery. Because if everything is undone--”

“We’ll simply repeat the treatment,” Gold replies, barely looking up from the pad he’s scribbling on. “It is common for a patient to need more than one course. Particular when one has a history as long and deeply-embedded as yours has been.”

“What if this is all that happens?” Regina presses, forcing herself to look up. “I get the treatment, there’s a week or two of blissful ignorance, and then I’m seeing my dead infant son as a teenager all over again? What kind of cure is that?”

“Now, Regina. You know enough about this process by now to know that ‘cure’ is not a helpful word.”

He’s so smug in his wide-lapeled jacket, ten years out of style though it is. Although he has attempted to brush the shoulders and collar, there’s still a hint of dandruff where his hair skims the fabric. And that’s just a little too shiny to be anything but straight off a department store rack. In her smart skirt and blouse, Regina feels that in one area she finally has the upper hand. The trenchcoat on the back of her chair only solidifies the look. 

“What if… what if we’re wrong about something? About part of my diagnosis? That might skew the results of any treatment, right?” Regina can hear the desperation in her voice, and digs her fingernails into her palms to keep focus. 

“Mental health doesn’t work quite like that. Everything we’ve done is beneficial for you, regardless of the details of your condition. These are healthy behaviors,” Gold continues. “Ones that we would urge any patient to aim for.”

“This is as good as it gets?” 

“Relapses are surprisingly frequent, as I’ve said before,” Gold sounds bored, damn him. He’s not even subtle about glancing towards the clock on the wall. “If you came to me expecting some secret deal in exchange for a solution that can never be guaranteed, well…”

“But even when things seem to be working, none of you have ever been able to tell me why,” Regina accuses. “Is it really just some horrible game of roulette? Land on black, change your meds. Land on red, there’s a new type of talk therapy. Is that really all there is?”

“Your conditions--”

“What if it’s just something wrong with me?” Regina can hear the start of a wail in her words. She promised herself she wouldn’t lose it again, wouldn’t embarrass herself one more time in public. “What if I’m just… broken?”

That, at least, gets his attention. 

“Broken? Whoever told you that?”

“It feels like it might apply. And we both know that some broken things can’t be fixed. Sometimes it’s kinder… I used to ride horses, did I ever mention that? Well, anyway. I did. And you know what happens when a horse breaks its leg, don’t you?”

“Is that what led you to attempt to take your own life?”

“That’s a little euphemistic for a professional.”

“Is that what led you to slash your wrists and bleed out?”

“Better. And no. It wasn’t. As far as I can remember.”

“ECT is a powerful treatment, you’ve felt the effects. But it can take more than one course to get the balance right. I think we’ve started on a path that will, ultimately, help you.” Gold is sincere for once, as though something in Regina’s plight has pulled him from his professorial demeanor. “But those effects can fade. Let’s keep going. Studies suggest additional treatments are almost always needed, with support from other therapies.”

“That wasn’t how you sold it to me,” Regina is out of her seat at that new nugget of information. The rage that courses through her feels like a warm drink on a frigid winter’s day. “You suggested that by taking your advice, by doing this one dramatic, life-changing thing, I would finally stop hurting. I would stop feeling… crazy.” 

“That was always our best hope,” Gold clarifies, but he’s pressed back against his seat in discomfort as Regina paces. She’s sure she looks wild, hair falling in her face and all but gnashing her teeth as she considers this latest in a long line of heartbreaks. “As with anything, Regina, you have to commit. You have to want to be better.”

“And frying my brain wasn’t commitment enough? Sixteen, seventeen years of session after pill after therapy, wasn’t a sign that I wanted it?” Regina is shrieking now, leaning over Gold with one hand on his shoulder to brace herself. He looks terrified, and Regina considers how it might feel to close her grasping fingers around his throat instead. She could plead insanity, after all.

“Threatening me won’t--”

“Shut up.” Regina growls.

“At least now you fully understand your situation. In the hospital we prioritized any measure necessary to pull you back from that suicidal precipice. Was I supposed to tell your wife there was no point in fighting for you? That we should unpick the stitches and let you finish the job?”

He’s rattled, the bastard. The sneer on his features makes Regina pull back in disgust. For so long she’s been manipulated by men like this: the incompetent and the overcompensating. She’s asked for answers, for justice, and been fed platitudes and placebos instead. 

“I’m supposed to be glad I have clarity?” She asks, still breathing hard, but safe back behind her own empty chair. “Forgive me, but that’s a shitty consolation prize. Although I think you might be right, just not in the way you assume. I’m not broken, am I? This whole fucked up system is what’s broken.”

“With more talk therapy, and perhaps a new drug regimen--”

“That’s exactly what this was supposed to avoid,” Regina reminds him, tears beginning to fall at the futility. She knows that her decision-making has been compromised time and time again, by grief or anger, and even apathy. An apology to Emma, trying to be better for Snow, letting doctor after doctor pull her back and forth until her head spins. 

But this backtracking, this betrayal of the risk she thought she was taking, is finally too much to bear. 

She’s given everything, every last bit of dignity and control, only to be as fragile as she was before. The constantly shifting goalposts of what it means to be well, to be healed, have moved beyond her reach at last. The broken promises lie around her feet like creeping vines, ready to pull her under. This time, Regina isn’t sure she knows how to fight back.

“You have an illness, Regina,” Gold reminds her. He stands, too, reaching for his cane with a glint in his eye that suggests he won’t accept another invasion of his personal space. “Just like hypertension or diabetes, not treating this with all effective measures could be life-threatening. Hasn’t your family been through enough?”

“They have.” She hangs her head, defeated. Once more the illness, the system that treats it has worn her down. They’ll find a new drug in a year or two, and that will seem so much better than all the rest. Until it doesn’t work anymore, or the side effects make her think that she’s dying. She’ll come here once a week and talk about the pain that’s been consuming her for so long that there can’t be anything left inside of her at all. She'll smile at Emma over dinner each night. Regina will pretend that something--anything--is better than the nothing they’ve been left with.

“So we’ll keep trying,” Gold announces. He nods his head as though there’s been some kind of vote, like he’s won some decisive victory. Regina opens her mouth to agree, to ask what plan he has for her. As she blinks, she remembers her mother. Cora Mills in all her glory: dictating to Regina who she could spend time with, what she should study and what a lady ought to be. The lectures that Regina sat through meekly, the retorts she never made, the fights she walked away from, they all line up as a parade of accusations, and she scrambles around for how she ever broke free of that before.

It comes to her in a rush, a flickering burst of memory whispered in Emma’s voice, a hundred flashes of Emma’s face. Defiance. Standing up to mother. Saying no when it mattered most of all. Regina tenses, and feels the seductive pull of giving in fade away.

“My first shrink,” Regina begins. “Wasn’t even trained, really. He did a psych rotation in medical school, I think. So when I was admitted to the ER and displayed some symptoms, he gave me my first diagnosis. I think he literally read it out of a textbook at me.”

“This is before Dr. Hopper?”

“Right. Dr. Whale,” Regina confirms. “Who, over the years, I’ve come to realize knows more about hair gel than the practice of psychiatry. But back then I was so desperate I would listen to anyone who’d take the decisions out of my hands.”

“We’re running a little short on time,” Gold points out, and not kindly.

“I’m aware. But since I’m paying, I’ll use whatever I have left,” Regina tells him. She shifts her balance and wishes she’d worn more comfortable shoes. “Anyway, Whale told me that grief lasting any longer than four months is considered pathological and should be medicated. I walked out of there with my first Prozac prescription. It seems so long ago, now.”

“Those guidelines have been reviewed.”

“Four months? So what, it’s five now? To ‘get over’ losing my child? My son?”

“They are just guidelines,” Gold assures her; patronizes her, really. “No more than that.”

“Well, doctor.” Regina draws herself up to her full height, shoulders rounded and spine straightened. brushing that one maddening strand of hair that lingers out of her face. “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said to me. They're guidelines. Not rules.”

She turns to leave, and Gold realizes her exit for what it is.

“Regina, wait. Don’t give up on treatment. Don’t give up on me, on this path.” He follows her, laying a gentle hand on her forearm to drive the point home. “I know medicine isn’t magic, but in this world it’s the one thing we do have. It’s your best chance.”

“I was supposed to give Henry his best chance,” Regina replies, her words dulled by the fresh wave of pain that saying his name brings. “Sometimes, plans change. Goodbye, Dr. Gold.”

With that, she wriggles free of Gold’s loose grip, and walks right out of his office.

***

She makes it past reception, ignoring Belle’s questioning about fixing the next appointment. Regina is stopped short by the sight of Snow leaning against the car outside.

“Where’s--” she starts to ask, but Snow rolls her eyes.

“The station called her pretty much as soon as you went in. She got me to drive over to meet you while she went to deal with it.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“Well, we can’t have you roaming the streets, I guess. Are you gonna cook tonight, or should we get groceries on the way home?” Snow knows the suggestion will only irritate, and Regina refuses to give her the satisfaction.

“There’s some baked ziti in the fridge,” Regina tells her. “Surely one of us can stretch to heating it. Maybe even pour a glass of water or two to go along with it.”

“So,” Snow asks, once the car is in drive and they’re negotiating their way out of the crowded little parking lot. “What’s the verdict this time? Should I tell Henry to belt up in the back there?”

Regina looks round, relieved when she sees nothing but a backseat littered with empty coffee cups and discarded magazines. Her family, outside of her domain, are lazy in their housekeeping standards. When she turns back, she meets Snow’s glare in the rearview mirror. Regina shrugs, no longer willing to deny her problems.

“The doctor said I can have more shock therapy. Or go back on meds. Maybe do pick ‘n’ mix with some new ones, like we’re at the movies or I’ve got unlimited store credit at Walgreens.”

“What are you gonna do?” Snow steers the car confidently into the faster lane, her eyes flicking to each mirror in turn. Emma taught her well, Regina realizes.

“Well, I thought I might make sure you get to your prom.”

“It’s not a prom, it’s a dance. And I’m not going.”

“Sweetheart, I know this is going to sound a little strange coming from me, but you have got to start thinking about yourself. About your future. About happiness.”

Regina finds out then that there’s more of her in Snow than she might ever have imagined, so deep is the sigh that emerges from her daughter.

“It’s not happiness, Mom. It’s David Nolan.” Snow turns her head for a moment, and they share an almost conspiratorial smile. “And some stolen beers, all while we try to pretend like it’s a ballroom. It’s just a room that smells of dirty socks decorated with ugly streamers.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Mom, you know you can’t just bail on your doctor, right? I mean, I’m sure the insurance will cover someone else, right?”

“I’m pretty sure I can ‘just bail’,” Regina corrects, fiddling with the radio to hide her nerves over the decision. “Or maybe I’ve finally gone all the way around the bend, hmm? No more lucid Mommy days, kid.”

“It’s weird when you call me that. You never call me that.”

“Sorry. I was thinking about your Mom,” Regina sighs. “She won’t be happy about this, will she?”

“You taking your life in your hands?” Snow asks. “She might have something to say about that, yeah.”

The traffic around them is slowing, the lanes becoming dense with cars as something up ahead brings their progress to a gradual halt.

“Am I?” Regina counters. “Maybe it’s dicing with death, but nobody ever seems to know anything. It’s just guess after guess. And nothing ever seems to work for long.”

“I’m no professional, but what the hell happened to ‘better the devil you know’?”

“Like I said, maybe I’m crazy. Or maybe when the devil won’t let you change things, it’s time to change the whole damn setup.” Regina answers, the passion for something different, something better coloring her words as they fall from her tongue. Their richness lingers in the cramped space of the car as she savors them.

“Do you even have a plan?” Snow persists, chewing on her bottom lip as she stares straight ahead at the lines of traffic. She would, of course, have a multitude of lists and charts drawn up to make a decision like this. Regina used to think she needed that too. Instead, this is gut instinct talking at last, something she hasn’t felt since the hazy memories of saying ‘yes’ to Emma’s hamfisted , blurted proposal.

“My plan is... I’m tired of this, Snow. I didn’t choose this life. I’ve blamed myself, and everyone else, for so long…”

“You blame me, don’t you?”

“Sometimes. It wasn’t rational, you understand that? It had no basis in truth, just the grief trying to find another way out of me.” Regina folds her hands in her lap, unsure that she should be sharing these particular truths, but today has become one of total, brutal honesty. “I’m sorry I didn’t protect you from that. You must be pretty tired of it all, too.”

Snow laughs, and it’s not as hollow as it might be.

“We’ll be home soon,” she says, her brain clearly at work on something bigger than small talk. “I suppose I am kinda tired.”

“You hid it well.” Regina can’t resist teasing. They so rarely talk anymore without a tantrum or sudden sulk erupting. Maybe the confines of the car are forcing it, or maybe it’s just time to air this dirty family laundry at last. “Unfortunately for you, you hide your emotions about as well as I do. You’re a lot like me, darling.”

“I can dump you out of this car anytime I like, lady,” Snow warns, but there’s little malice in it.

“I mean it. I can’t always find a way to react, but I see that rage you have bubbling inside you. It’s just that I see the hope, too. All this upheaval and still your grades are perfect, your violin is a joy to listen to… I’m so proud of you. I don’t suppose I tell you that often enough.”

“Mom tells me. You know, on your behalf? It’s enough, most of the time.”

“You shouldn’t have had to cope with a mother who can’t,” Regina soothes, as best as she knows how. She lays a hand on top of her daughter’s, although Snow keeps both hands on the wheel. “I really am sorry if I ruined your recital. And all the other things, too. It can’t be easy, especially in a small town.”

“You know,” Snow’s face hardens, Regina notices the change even in profile. That short, dark hair is such a contrast to the pale skin, and that form of monochrome seems fitting for a daughter who lurches from one extreme to the next, always fiercely in opposition to something. And yet somewhere along the way she became a sort of gray area, the one safe spot in their family life, where everyone could reassure themselves of the love and togetherness that couldn’t be taken for granted. “It’s super cool that you’re opening up now. But where has all this ‘talk to Mommy’ crap been for all these years?”

“Like I said… I’m sorry, dear.”

“I used to wish you’d just go away,” Snow blurts, in an admission of her own. “When you would leave for appointments, or the times you were in the hospital, or the clinic. I would get down on my knees beside my bed every night and ask God not to bring you back.”

“How did that work out for you?” Regina retorts, because it’s speak or acknowledge what feels like a shard of glass piercing round about where her heart should be.

“Well, I’m an atheist, so… but at the same time I would pray for that, I’d start crying just in case it came true. I didn’t know what I wanted.”

“I think that’s just part of being young.” The traffic is moving again, and Snow wastes no time darting their way through it, exploiting every gap or moment of hesitation from other drivers. 

“I cried, you know,” Snow’s voice is quiet now, the trees by the side of the road thinning out and making Storybrooke visible on the horizon. “When I thought you were gonna die. I mean, for real this last time. But I can’t keep crying over you, Mom. Nothing I say or do ever seems to help. Nothing will make you forgive me for not being him.”

“I promise you, that was never the case.” It’s barely a lie, Regina can’t remember ever feeling so cruel about a little girl, but her conscience prickles in recognition. “However sad that made me, I never wanted some kind of swap. I just wanted you both, do you see the difference?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I just wanted to give you a normal life,” Regina sighs, and the tears are building up again. “Only trouble is, I don’t think I know what that looks like.”

“Hey, nobody’s asking for normal,” Snow replies, taking one hand off the wheel long enough to reach over and squeeze Regina’s briefly. “But something next to normal might work?”

“Deal,” Regina agrees. “We’re pretty tough. I think we’ll get there.”

“I don’t know that I believe you,” Snow is wary again, withdrawing her hand completely. “I want to, but…”

“Your brother died,” Regina can see now what honesty Snow is lacking, what truths she needs to hear to have faith again. “It was… oh God, I haven’t said this in so long… it was an intestinal obstruction. He was still so little, and when he started to cry so much, we thought that just happened. Your mom and I, we didn’t know any better. We didn’t know who to ask. No parents to lean on.”

“I guess. Didn’t people offer--”

“Not back then. Believe it or not, people were scared of me as Mayor. And scared of your grandmother, too. That took even longer for people to get over.”

“Your memory is definitely getting better,” Snow says. She takes the last turning that leads them straight into Storybrooke. 

“The doctors missed it. They had all these suggestions, nothing helped.”

“So he died.”

“He died,” Regina gasps at having to say it again, but she soldiers on regardless. She owes this much. “I’m sorry we never talked about this. At first you were too young, and then we thought it was dwelling on the past, or unhealthy…”

“I suppose I never asked. I worked out enough from the way you and Mom would talk.”

“You were still our happy ending,” Regina tries. “I know I haven’t always been happy, but we got by, didn’t we?”

“Happy endings are usually pretty dumb,” Snow tells her, with all the authority of a true teenage smartass. 

“Well, look at the time,” Regina interrupts before a rant can start. “You’ll make your dance after all.”

“Mom--”

“No arguments. You shall go to the ball. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your blue dress under that coat, missy. You wanted to go.”

“How will you get home?”

“I can walk,” Regina says. “Just let me off before the school, I could use the chance to stretch my legs.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, Snow. I’m sure.”

***

Regina lingers just long enough to watch David, pacing outside the gym, light up like a Christmas tree at the sight of Snow walking towards him. Maybe it’s true love, Regina muses to herself. Maybe it’s a teenage fling that will just be a memory by the time Snow’s ensconced at Yale. Either way, it's something happy.

She closes her eyes as they walk inside, hand in hand without the protest Regina would have expected from her daughter. If wishes came true, she would wish in that moment for Snow’s happiness, for a life blessed by adventure and excitement. She would wish that David turn into a fine man, an upstanding guy who would always make Snow feel loved, but never diminish her to do it. Most of all, she would wish for a freedom from pain. That much, at least, Snow has earned.

Regina opens her eyes and wills the world to look just a little different, for her hypothetical wishes to somehow have registered in the cosmos. Devoid of that satisfaction, she pushes her hair back with one hand, and starts out on the short journey home.

***

“There was no emergency,” Emma groans, slumping into the armchair by the window. It’s always been her favorite, one she insisted on bringing from their happy little house in the woods even though it matches nothing and is worn away in all the parts that Emma tends to drape herself over. Regina bites her tongue, time and again, but on this one issue Emma has never felt the need to compromise. “I felt bad about lying, so I thought I should ‘fess up.”

“Okay,” Regina responds, removing her jacket. She watches Emma for a minute, something inscrutable in her expression. “Snow went to the dance. With David.”

“I’m not sure he’s the kind of guy she should be wasting her time on.”

“That’s exactly what my mother said about you. Well, in between all the Bible quotes and slurs, at least.”

“And here we are anyway,” Emma wriggles her way deeper into the cushions. “You look… I don’t know. Different, somehow. Good appointment?”

“You could say that,” Regina is hedging, never a good sign. “If it wasn’t an emergency, why did you trade places with our daughter? I think I can guess, but I want to hear it from you.”

“You can guess?”

“Emma.”

“Fine. I didn’t want to be there, okay?” Emma twines her fingers in her lap, because that gives her something to look at besides Regina’s face. “You talked in the car about backsliding, about being back to the start and I… I guess I panicked. I’m not proud of it.”

“When we first met a recurring headache would have been enough to make you run. I think something this bad makes even the most committed person think about a way out.” Regina’s voice is quiet, but she doesn’t sound quite as hurt as Emma expected. “That’s what I was trying to work out in the car.”

“I know. But I’m here. If I only run away to our own house, does that really count?”

“Well, all the extra driving isn’t great for the environment,” Regina muses, and the hint of teasing is enough to let Emma look up again. She wishes she hadn’t when Regina’s questioning gaze lands on her, head tilted as she tries to puzzle out what else Emma isn’t telling her. 

In fact, Emma’s so busy trying to deflect that penetrating look that she doesn’t expect Regina to keep talking.

“I’m going upstairs to get a bag together. And then we need to talk, okay?”

“What?” Emma gasps. “What do you mean a bag?”

“I won’t be more than ten minutes,” Regina says, already moving towards the door. “Wait for me. Please?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Emma replies, hoping beyond hope that Regina understands that she means that in all possible ways. “I’ll be right here.”

Regina doesn’t acknowledge, or even look back. Emma counts the footsteps on the staircase, and settles in to wait. She should make coffee, maybe, or go freshen up. But all of her numbs feel numb and there’s an itch at the back of her head that she can’t seem to order her hand to scratch. 

So she sits. She waits.

***

It takes more than one bag in the end, because without a definite plan, Regina has no idea what to take. It’s a roller case and a rucksack in the end, crammed as delicately as possible with her favorite items of clothing and a few practical essentials. She checks her purse for cards and ID, shoving her passport and the paperwork for the untouched trust money that mother left for her in beside the lip balm and night cream she can’t bear to leave behind. 

Emma’s still sitting in the chair, her position as rigid as her smile, when Regina makes her way into the den. The bags are left by the threshold, neither hidden nor included, and Regina takes a breath so deep that the air seems to be sucked out of the room for a moment.

“So.”

“So?” Emma croaks in response. She scrunches her nose the way she does when she’s starting to get angry, and Regina forces herself to continue despite that. 

“Anyway, it’s… I’m leaving.”

“The bag you packed… it doesn’t have anything for me in it?”

“No.”

“So I’m gonna go ahead and guess there’s nothing for Snow, either. Am I supposed to be grateful you’re not trying to take my daughter from me?”

“You’ve been more than faithful, Emma. You’ve been so loyal, so devoted. But if one thing has become clear in all this latest insanity… well. Clearly, I can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s only going to drive us both mad. Today, Gold offered me new drugs and therapy. Can you believe that?”

“I can. It’s what doctors do, Regina.”

“You really think we can survive another round of it? The first few weeks of side effects? The euphoria when it seems like it’s working?”

“The crash a few weeks or months later when it stops working,” Emma finishes, eyes closed and her voice barely audible. “I know the cycle. What makes you think leaving will do anything different?”

“Because it’s the one thing we haven’t tried,” Regina admits, taking the last few steps across the space that separates them, kneeling in front of Emma in her chair, rebel princess on her shabby throne. “And darling, you’ve always been there for me. You’ve picked me up each and every time I’ve fallen. But that… I don’t know what the ground beneath my feet should feel like anymore. I have to do this on my own. I have to--”

“Do it for yourself,” Emma supplies, and there’s anguish in her eyes as she reaches out a trembling hand to caress Regina’s cheek. “All this time, I’ve just been holding you back?”

“No,” Regina states, leaning into the touch to make it more definite against her skin. The last time, she thinks. The last time for who knows how long. “No, don’t ever think that. I couldn’t bear it if you thought that. You saved me, Emma. I wasn’t always grateful, but I wouldn’t trade what we’ve had for anything.”

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing,” Emma accuses, the flash of anger in her eyes as real and sudden as summer lightning. “You’re trading in our marriage, our home, for your freedom. You’re the one running away.”

“I think I’m running towards something,” Regina corrects her, grateful that Emma hasn’t withdrawn her hand yet. “I hope I’m at least walking towards it, anyway. I think I need to be in a world that isn’t this small. A world where bad things happen to other people, too. A world that Henry’s never been a part of, so it’ll be harder to miss him in it.”

“If changing your zipcode is what works, we could have done that years ago.”

“The timing would have been wrong. It’s been a terrible journey, sweetheart, but I think this is where it was meant to bring me. Us. Meant to bring us.”

“I thought you were my true love,” Emma chokes, the tears she’s been fighting are falling at last. She reaches for Regina’s shoulders with both hands, and leans forward to hold her in an awkward half-hug. “So what have we been, then? Just another symptom?”

“We’ve been love,” Regina says. “I loved you more than anything, once. I don’t think anyone could confuse cleaning my blood off the floor with romance. But the love was always real. Always.”

“So why not stay?” Emma pleads. “Or wait just a little longer, and we’ll both go. We can sell the house and get a little place on the coast, or closer to New Haven, or hell, Paris if that’s what you want.”

“Because then I’m still just letting chance, and other people guide me. It’s time for me to be the one taking chances. When we lost our son, I shut down so quickly that nobody ever checked if I could truly start up again. It’s only now that I feel ready. Please, don’t try to stop me.”

“Is there nothing I can say?”

“I have to try this, Emma. If I stay here… I’ll die. I’m sure of it. I know you still love me, so please, let me try the thing that lets me live.”

“I do love you,” Emma rubs circles on Regina’s back, and for a moment it’s so breathtakingly comforting that Regina wavers. She draws in another deep breath and pushes herself back up to standing. If she hesitates on the way up, it’s only the habit of wanting to kiss her wife, but kissing goodbye is more than Regina can bear right now. Kissing Emma goodbye is what will guarantee she never leaves.

“I love you, too. I will always love you. But it’s time for me to go.”

“Regina--”

“It’s time,” Regina says, and before she can reconsider she turns away from her wife and walks back towards where her hastily-packed bags are waiting. The taxi she called before packing is waiting at the foot of the drive, and Regina keeps walking until the grumpy driver is holding open the back door of the cab for her. He takes her bags, tucks them away, and they’re rolling down Mifflin Street before Regina can give a destination. 

“You don’t want to know where I’m going?”

“Looked like you were in a hurry,” the driver replies, and though his beard is unkempt and the cab smells like fading cigarettes and stale coffee, there’s sympathy in his eyes when they meet Regina’s in the mirror. “But okay, where to?”

“Here,” Regina says, fishing some fifties and twenties from her purse. “Head towards Boston, keep going until the cash runs out. I’ve got more, if we need it.”

“Yes ma’am,” the driver says. “You mind a little music? There’s this great classical station--”

“That would be lovely,” Regina says. It’s distraction enough to get her around the first corner without looking back.

***

Emma doesn’t move.

She’s vaguely aware that the sun is setting, and the room is getting darker by the minute, but still her legs won’t cooperate. If she moves, it all becomes real. Here, paralyzed and numb, she can pretend it’s just another nightmare, and that’s about all her brain can handle right now.

“Mom?” 

Just as it has done for years, the word alone is a call to action. On autopilot, Emma shakes her head and calls right back.

“Yeah, kid?”

“Did Mom just leave?”

“She did.”

It would make sense to lean over and switch on the lamp, but Emma doesn’t want to just yet. Somehow the house feels small and full in the darkness. No grand staircase or echoing rooms to consider.

“You left David at the dance?”

Silence. Of course.

“Is everything okay?”

“That was pretty dumb, Mom. You know I’m not Snow.”

“No. Nope. Nuh uh.”

“Mom--”

“Shut. Up.”

“You can’t ignore me like you did before. There’s no one else for me to talk to.”

“This isn’t happening,” Emma groans, clutching at her hair. If she tugs on it, and the pain in her scalp is real, and it hurts… fuck.

“No, this is just a reaction. Regina left me and this is… I stayed, all these years. But she walked out on me. So of course my brain is trying to trick me right now.”

“Nice try. But I stayed all these years, too.”

“Why didn’t you go with her?”

“Because this is my home, duh.”

“Oh, Christ. I can’t do this. I can’t, I…”

Emma pounds her fist against the arm of the chair, and the dull thud is almost satisfying. She does the same with her other hand, alternating and increasing the pace. Somewhere, she thinks she starts to shout, but the words don’t make any sense. 

“You died, Henry. You’re dead, and you’re not here. You’re not my replacement, you’re not what happens because she’s gone. I don’t accept this. You died, all those years ago.”

“I know, Mom. You watched me die, and I watched both of you die a little too. I watched everything good that you fought for get slowly taken away. I watched you hurt, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“I waited for everything to get better. Now it’s like she never gave a damn.”

“She still gives a damn. And you know she always has. I’m saying that even though you told her to get rid of me over and over again. You thought you’d succeeded this time, didn’t you?”

“You’re not real, kid.”

“Sure I am.”

“What does this mean?”

“Whatever you think it means.”

“Mom?” The voice from the hall is clearly Snow this time, but Emma looks to the spot where Henry stood, there’s nothing but a beam of light from the window on the carpet. “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

“Oh, I dozed off,” Emma lies. “Kid, we need to talk about something.”

“Did Mom go? It felt like maybe she was… oh, shit.”

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay, anyway.”

“Will it?” Snow asks, taking a seat on the arm of the chair and pulling Emma into a strange one-armed sort of hug. It’s only then that Emma notices David in the doorway, his grin sheepish but his eyes concerned. Maybe he’s not such a bad kid, after all.

“Well,” Emma says, leaning over to kiss her daughter’s cheek. “Let’s face it. It’s not like it can ever get much worse.”

***

“And you haven’t heard anything?” Emma demands, blocking the door of the diner so that Archie Hopper and his latte can’t get past her. “Not even a phone message? Surely if she has a new doctor, you had to send files over?”

“I sent her files to Gold, Sheriff. I told you that.”

“There’s no way she gets back in touch with him. I staked out his office, and nothing.”

“That’s not a good idea--”

“Can you at least tell me if she’s okay?”

Archie looks pleadingly past Emma, to where his faithful Dalmatian is tethered to a streetlamp. He considers the desperate woman in front of him, it seems, and finally sighs in defeat. Emma refrains from punching the air in victory.

“She’s working on it. That’s all I know. Now please, let me pass.”

“Fine,” Emma concedes, relieved to get even that nugget of information. It’s something to tell Snow, at least. “Hey, Rubes! You got my package ready?”

“Sheriff?” Archie surprises her by walking back into the diner. “I just wanted to say… the price of love is loss.”

“Well, it’s one I was willing to pay,” Emma fires back, even as her stomach somersaults at the truth of his words. “And my family has had enough loss for one lifetime, doc.”

“Listen, if you wanted to come and chat sometime--”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Emma can’t imagine sharing her secrets with this man who’s known Regina’s every thought for years. And yet the temptation of that connection, of him possibly slipping and sharing some other tidbit of news makes her hesitate.

“I could recommend someone. If you ever do need to talk?”

Every other day Emma might have shot him down, but she’s getting tired of staking out clinics and checking the corners of her room for visions of her long-dead son. Surprisingly Dr. Hopper even more than herself, Emma relents and nods in agreement. 

“I’ll pop by this week, pick up a name and number from you. Thanks.”

“Happy to help,” Archie tells her, and then he’s off and collecting Pongo at last. 

“Here you go,” Ruby says, handing the box over to Emma. “You sure you don’t want to do this here?”

“No thanks,” Emma replies. “And no offense, it’s just that this is a family thing.” 

***

She walks into the kitchen to find Snow wedged firmly between the counter and David Nolan. Emma clears her throat while rolling her eyes, managing not to drop her package at the same time. 

“Less of that, please,” Emma tells them, but there’s not much menace in her words. “Now come on, sit, sit. Snow, the table looks great.”

“Did you get anything out of Archie this week?” Snow demands, although she’s already untying the string on the box Emma has laid on the table. 

“She’s okay, apparently. That’s it, all he would kinda confirm.”

“It’s something,” Snow reminds her. “David, you do the honors, please?”

He nods, fishing around in his pocket and grinning when Emma mutters something about weed in the house and jail cells just loud enough for him to hear. A moment later, the candles are lit, and he begins a rousing version of ‘Happy Birthday’, all by himself.

Emma joins in, mangling a few notes and laughing easier than she has in weeks. Snow is blushing furiously, never comfortable at the center of attention. Emma leans in, and instructs her daughter with solemn purpose at the end of the song. 

“Make a wish.”

Snow frowns, rolls her eyes dramatically and hesitates for a long moment before blowing out her candles.

“What did you wish for?” David asks, but he gets frosting smeared on his nose in response. “What, you don’t think it’s bad luck to tell, do you? Emma, make her tell!”

“I don’t need to,” Emma says, looking at her daughter with quiet pride. “I know exactly what she wished for.”

“Right,” David says, catching on. “I guess we all wish the same right now, huh?”

“Should we keep a slice for Mom?” Snow asks, and Emma feels her lower lip tremble as she forms the answer.

“If she comes back, we’ll get a whole new cake. I promise.”

“You think she will?” Snow persists, as relentless as her mothers.

“I don’t know, kid,” Emma tells her. “And that’s just gonna have to be enough, for now.”

 

FIN.


	6. The Price of Love is Loss...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance if this ending is not a happy one for you, or if it’s different to your own imaginings of what comes next. This is the story that feels right for all of our characters, and I hope you’ll indulge me.

Emma tugs at the blazer one more time, frowning at herself in the full-length mirror that takes up one corner of the bedroom. It’s still not decorated entirely to her taste, but it’s nearer than anywhere else has been. A ‘fixer-upper’, the realtor had called it; one hernia, two broken toes and a busted chainsaw later, Emma’s filing that description as an understatement.

They say the light’s different down here in Boston, and she’s inclined to agree. Her hair looks a little more blonde than silver again, without the need for the six-weekly appointments alongside Ruby, chatting about Storybrooke’s weirder residents side by side in their foils.

She should call, Emma realizes. Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow there’ll be something to tell.

The front door opens and slams shut a moment later, and Emma’s heart sinks. She checked three times that Snow wouldn’t be home this weekend, and the demands of sophomore year were supposed to keep her on campus.

“Hey,” Snow gasps a moment later, popping her head around the doorframe as though she’s scared to commit any more of her body to the firing line. “Don’t get pissed, okay? Me being here doesn’t change your plans. I just wanted to see you off, I guess. Give you my blessing, since you’re too damn stubborn to ask for it.”

“I don’t need your blessing. It’s dinner. It’s—“

“I know what it is. And I’m proud of you. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Maybe,” Emma mumbles, staring at the stripped wooden floorboards. “Although it’s kinda nice to hear it again.”

“You should get going. Traffic’s a little bitchy over the bridge. A few minutes late is fine, shows you’re not desperate. But more than ten and you’re just an inconsiderate ass.”

“Says the girl who no doubt has a car trunk full of laundry for me to do tomorrow,” Emma groans, but when she glances at the mirror again, she feels good about the starched white shirt, the black blazer and the dress pants that she hasn’t worn since her FBI interviews. It’s smart enough for a restaurant, but not so much that she’ll choke on it. She looks… like herself, and that’s something she hasn’t always been able to say.

“Go check the restaurant name one more time for me? It’s on the fridge,” Emma asks, silently pleading for a moment alone that she won’t have to explain.

“Fine,” Snow grumbles. “But I’m still seeing you off.”

Emma nods, and Snow disappears in a flurry of footsteps; she’s never been one to walk when she can run instead.

“Kid?” Emma whispers. “Kid? I mean…Henry?”

Nothing. Not even the stirring of a breeze through her open bedroom window. Emma shoves her hands in her pockets, closes her eyes and waits. She counts to ten, then ten all over again, imagining the ‘Mississippi’s between each number. It’s been months, now. But if ever he were to make a reappearance, it would be tonight. 

“Okay,” Emma says to herself after two seemingly endless minutes elapse. She opens her eyes and a quick scan confirms she’s as alone as she was before Snow arrived.

“Ready?” Snow asks, post-it clutched firmly in her hand as she waits at the foot of the stairs. “No one is gonna blame you if you’re not.”

“I’m ready,” Emma decides, taking the steps two at a time and sure of the gripping soles on her low-slung ankle boots. Snow is dressed in a college uniform of sorts: mismatched sweats that also don’t match the beanie hat pulled down over her currently spiky hair. “Gimme that.”

“Call me,” Snow says quietly as they meet up for one of their brief but heartfelt hugs. “At some point tonight? Even a text, just so I know it’s going okay.”

“I’m not going to get murdered on a dinner date, kid. Trust me, I’m a Fed now, remember?”

“It’s a desk job, so don’t get all Dirty Harry on me, Mom.”

“You sticking around until morning?”

“Until Tuesday, actually.”

“Right. Well…”

“Mom,” Snow sighs, grabbing Emma’s arm and steering her towards the front door. “Go. You can’t move on if you don’t actually move.”

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“You should. You’re paying like, 30 grand a year to make me this right.”

“Don’t remind me,” Emma chuckles. “I’ll call you when I’m heading home.”

***

The restaurant is just the right side of pretentious for Emma’s liking. She doesn’t mind that they leave the prices off the menu, just so long as she can pronounce more than one of the beers on tap.

“Swan?” Emma mutters at the maître’d, quiet enough to only be ignored. She tries again, a little louder and forcing some politeness “I mean, I booked a table for two. Name’s Swan.”

“Ah, of course,” the man says, like he’s only just noticed her. “Your guest has already arrived, we’ve seated her.”

“She has?” Emma squeaks, her plan to steady her nerves with a glass of water and practicing small talk on some breadsticks evaporating before her eyes. “Oh, I uh…”

“Right this way,” the shorter man insists, just a hint of edge in his voice. Emma can’t blame him for wanting to move it along, the line for this place is already spilling out onto the street and halfway down the block. If she lets him get any further away, she won’t be able to hear him over the din of the super trendy music.

Thankfully, it’s quieter out on the restaurant floor, the music centered on the bar area where Emma realizes too late that she should have started this particular encounter; nothing like a couple of margaritas that cost as much as her jacket to set the mood after all.

The waiter has stopped, hovering impatiently by an empty seat. Despite his earlier assurance, there’s nobody sitting opposite.

“You said—“

“Perhaps she stepped out for a moment,” he suggests, already rocking on the balls of his feet and ready to dart off to the next request for a second bottle or extra bread. “But please, do sit.”

He pushes Emma’s chair half an inch as soon as she sits on it, before disappearing into the throng of tables with practiced ease. She drags herself the rest of the way into position, almost knocking the water glasses over in the process.

“I should be glad I didn’t order red,” a female voice breaks through the hubbub over Emma’s shoulder. For a moment, the entire restaurant fades out, and all Emma can hear is the pounding of her heart in her chest and the rasp of her suddenly uncatchable breath. “Because you’d be wearing it right now if I had.”

Emma starts, but somewhere in the conflicting signals to stand or remain seated, to offer a hand or go for a kiss on the cheek (too European, too far outside her comfort zone, too forward?) she ends up staring mutely instead.

“I can do both sides of the conversation if you like,” Regina sighs, taking her own seat and hanging her purse on the back of her chair. “God knows I’ve been practicing that since I called.”

“You look…I mean, wow. You look...”

“Tired? Haggard? Crazy? Much the same as ever, I guess,” Regina supplies, blushing as she fusses with putting the napkin in her lap, over a tight dark blue dress that’s definitely new. Two days new or two years new, Emma can’t be sure, but she didn’t miss the curves concealed and revealed by it in turn. There’s nothing tired about Regina, no hint of sleeplessness under her eyes, though her makeup is flawless as ever. The dark red on her lips draws Emma’s eyes like a magnet, and she realizes she’s as much of a goner as she ever was. 

“Regina,” Emma whispers, summoning her bravery and reaching across the small table for one of Regina’s hands. “I was so sure I’d walk in here and be surprisingly cool with this.”

“You’re not?”

“No, I am. I think.” Emma squeezes Regina’s fingers between her own, glowing as the gesture is reciprocated. “I mean, it doesn’t feel weird at all. Like maybe I just saw you yesterday.”

“Boston suits you,” Regina announces, withdrawing her hand as another waiter approaches. “I always planned to carry on to New York, but it works for me too.”

“It does?” Emma warns the waiter off with the briefest of glances, and he makes another circuit without missing a beat. “You’re in, uh… I mean, what are you trying these days? You have a good doc here?”

“Well, one thing I’m trying is not being defined by my illness,” Regina answers, though not unkindly. “I’ve been carrying around a lot of labels for a long time. Now I’m trying to make that just one part of my life. But yes, things are managed. Pretty well. Although there have been some rough patches. No doubt there will be again.”

“You’re working?”

“Mmm,” Regina flags the waiter down this time, and they spend a couple of pleasant minutes discussing wine before Regina goes ahead and orders them a bottle of red, fruitier than Emma might like, but she’s trying to be open to new things.

“I wanted to ask you—“ Emma begins when they’re alone again, but Regina is already plowing ahead. Her hair is longer, and despite the careful curls styled into it, it mostly hangs loose around her face. She looks more like the brassy young Mayor Emma first knew, more than she has in a long time.

“How’s Snow?”

“She gave this little meeting her blessing,” Emma starts with the important part. “Even came home this weekend to wave me off. But I think that’s more to do with how much laundry she’s hauling back with her. There can’t be a clean hoody left on campus for her to be putting in an appearance before finals.”

“I emailed. I guess she told you? I wanted to know about school.”

“She’s acing it like the horrible little genius she’s always been,” Emma sighs. “I’m glad, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think David Nolan would still be sniffing around her at this stage, but sure enough they’ve still got something going on. He’s around her more often than he’s not.”

“Good.” Regina seems genuinely pleased at that news. “She deserves to feel loved, Emma. God knows I never gave her that.”

“Hey,” Emma warns. “I’ll talk about anything you need to talk about, but no blaming yourself, okay? I refuse to believe that helps anyone.”

“Always protecting me,” Regina teases. “Always my knight in shining armor. Even after I walked out on you.”

“We both needed it,” Emma admits, something she hasn’t been able to do anywhere but in her twice-monthly therapy sessions. “It was rough, at first. Got it into my head that he… you know, that he would hang around with me instead. Scared the crap out of myself, pretty much.”

“You’ll be pleased to hear he hasn’t gone anywhere with me. The occasional dream, once in a while. Nothing more than that.”

“That is good to hear.”

“Listen, I know we’re just having dinner. I know it’s just a catch up on two years of nothing, and how much of that is my doing. But is there any chance--“ Regina begins, toying with her fork until she’s stabbing it into the tablecloth.

“That I want to say ‘fuck dinner’ and get the hell out of here?” Emma finishes, meeting the gleam in Regina’s eye with what has to be the same in her own. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“Is it a good idea?”

“Is anything, really?” Emma stands, throwing some loose bills on the table to cover their wine order, and extends a hand to her wife. Still her wife, always her wife; no paperwork filed, no change made permanent.

“Your place?”

“That might be asking for trouble,” Emma warns. “In the morning, maybe. If you wanted to see Snow, check out the new digs.”

“There’s a really nice hotel four blocks from here,” Regina tells her in a low voice as they collect their coats, not entirely necessary on a spring evening that’s mild for their corner of the world. “If that’s too ridiculous…”

“It’s just ridiculous enough,” Emma decides. “And this way, no traumatizing the undergrad, right?”

“Right.”

They walk in companionable silence for the first block, and when they cross the street, Regina grabs Emma’s arm, pulling her towards the shelter of the nearest building. In the doorway of a closed-up office, her dark eyes search Emma’s face, and it’s too late for her to put up any new defenses.

“It’s really this simple? After all I’ve done, after all you’ve put up with? A few conversations, a glass of wine—“

“Two glasses,” Emma corrects.

“And you’re ready to sneak off to some hotel with me? It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. I didn’t know if you’d ever forgive me.”

“You say that like I should blame you for wanting to be well.”

“I’m not cured, Emma. You know that. This is a good spell, there’s been some real progress. But the undamaged Regina is never coming back.”

A couple of drunk guys veer towards them, bumping shoulders and laughing at what is no doubt about to become an amateur seduction. Emma considers her options in a split second, before pulling her badge and warrant card from the pocket of her blazer.

“Move it along, fellas,” she warns, and they have the sense to correct course, stumbling on into the night.

“Did you hear what I said?” Regina takes her by the upper arms now, staring her down. “This isn’t some magical do-over.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Emma tells her, not even blinking in case Regina doubts the sincerity. “Did I hate you for walking out? Okay, maybe at first. But it gave me the time and space I’d never had before, To, well, fall apart. That’s okay, though. In the end, it’s let me deal with some stuff I put off for way too long.”

“What stuff?”

“You know. My own feelings over what happened… to our son. My own past. The things I gave up and the ways we both suffered. I actually talked about it all instead of hiding in making packed lunches and chasing down small town drunks. And let’s face it, Regina. Neither one of us was undamaged when we met. Your mom did a real number on you.”

“Just like never having parents did a number on you.” Regina isn’t smug when she counters, instead she rubs her thumbs on Emma’s arms in a gesture that’s something like comfort. “I’ve missed you, Emma Swan. Every day.”

“It’s still Swan-Mills, remember? And so maybe a week from now the yelling starts,” Emma concedes. “Maybe we’ll say some more things we wish we could take back. Plus, if this turns out to be an issue for Snow, you know she has to come first.”

“I do know that.”

“Then let’s go, woman. It’s not gonna be nice out forever. And unlike me, you’re not dressed for anything worse.”

“Emma—“

She ends the conversation with a kiss. At first, Emma doesn’t land quite right with her lips on Regina’s, but the slightest movement of their heads rectifies that. It’s two old dance partners straightening up for the first dance of the night, and if the ferocity in Regina’s mouth is any indication, she’s ready to skip straight to the outright sexiness of the tango.

“Sure?” Regina gasps when they finally part, nudging her smeared lipstick with her thumb. “I’m only asking this one last time, because I won’t be able to stop myself if this goes any further. You should know, I suppose, that I have no intention of breaking your heart. Not again.”

“You came back, Regina. My whole life, people walked out. But you came back. That’s more than enough for now. I swear. Right hand up to God, whatever you need to hear.”

“Well, then,” Regina smiles and for the first time all night there’s nothing guarded about it. She takes Emma’s hand, tentatively at first, but squeezing more firmly as they begin walking the rest of the way to the hotel. “I’m really glad I came back.”

Emma doesn’t have to say it, but she thinks it all the same.

_Me too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to finish the chapter title...
> 
> ...but still we pay. We love anyway.


End file.
